In suspended cotton glow,

My ****** architecture wondrously

waits permeated with the hollowness

  that comes with mind's dissolve in love.

(Even the birds read ***** politics and would rather hold wings to a drastic shift in light as appeared thru the nest and branches so connected with foggy earth
&
Even the jesters who's knees ache with
Lost children resolve to speaking Poems to the Forest who have not forgotten June's princely fever
& Even the cynical italian officer
Who's briefcase molds behind his arched
Brittle spine can relate to the fullness of
His daydream
& Town Hall accounts for each passing hour
& Taxicab antlers offering welcome thru its veiled windows do keep the radio of India praying)

I am finding more and more used condoms on the carpet of anonymous rooms/

But at least the refrigerator is stocked with Wine!

Your mind enlivened with roman flowers

The circus of a moment specified
With a pigeoncoop ****** humiliation
And the sewer rid of its own proud disgust

Here you wait on the grass
Watching the attic become swallowed in it's own blackness
& the windows betray your expectations
Of a good wedding

I (Reverie)

Thisbe senses diamonds in the dusk/
Turner protects himself with cozying ash created from the minerals of adoration

The street is a hundred constant cinders
Communicating with mystic language
Repeating itself

While the newsstation weeps
And front yards hold their damp cheeks
Cherishing the child who is now gone

The envisioned tower, embarassed with its Windows n lack of decorations/
Not even the cobwebs will settle in vicinity!

A paranoid Sculpter cant sleep and so takes to Spanish poetry

"You're giving out your tarot cards to
Yusuf what will he do with them!"

A mother says to her child who
Incidentally goes blind in that exact moment

An epitaph for the ashtray sitting precariously on the stainglass table on the porch where an
Empress seeks shelter
Carving at her senses with
Violent monologues about religion
Courtesy her friend

(A stranger to risk,
Some tired dull balloon rises up within her consciousness going higher and higher!)

II (December in Moods)

Mauve temporarily fills the room
Your soft breathing brings an elation
To the dresser at the foot of your bed
I can't rest here beside you
I want to kiss you
And your sleep

The discontent arrives
In shrouded form
You resign yourself to the kitchen watching logging trucks forever heave around the bend of forestry
Threatened with the possibility that they'll lose balance and collide with the house

I visit during Holidays with marigolds and fantasies of Asia
& with sweetness on verge
of imancipation
You kiss my face
attempting composure
As the radio promises
That this Winter will be especially
Frigid.

I apologize for my arrogance!
In losing friends, betraying my past beliefs for
White wine & phenomenology

You recite a foreign anthem with whispers, curious of the mathematics of romance.
Questioning yourself but especially yourself in relation to me.

III (Josephine, Burial)

In contemplation
A dog listens to nearby whistling
Of a young girl home from school/
In six months she'll fall victim to the divorce of her family/
And in twelve months
Accept that her mother had a lot of problems
It isn't her fault
It was never her fault/

In sixteen months she'll chip her front teeth on the coffee table

In three years she'll decide on a better first name
"Josephine"
In four she will legally change it and

In five the previously mentioned dog will be buried
With his owner's favorite scarf

IV (2015)

The August heat causing distant roads to waver in illusion while
A home catches fire

Luckily not my own

I save my mind one night before it loses itself to pure imaginative flow
In midsts of 108 repititions of the Gayatri Mantra
I remember that!
The portrait of a french woman robed in sunset colors is taken off the rotting walls of a Cabin, auburn with evening rain.

Silence!

V (The rosebush blushes while being painted)

Yggdrasil is being renovated a few blocks away & a garden is unable to answer
For its
Unusual poetics

The local raincoat impressionist observes
A fantasy hidden in the soil
Nurturing itself
With percieved
Infant curiosity

& the Capuchin dances on a grand piano
Lit by a candle
I'm gonna catch that ****** someday
But he is good at hiding and bringing me
Baskets of dead flies
With a smirk that says he knows
Exactly how sick he is
Unbathed and starved.

Sheathed in stolen jewelry
the Capuchin
Mocks Salvador Dali hung up beside us
I attempt to strangle him but he knows better and wraps a necklace around my throat
& tightens in a boiling silence

Meanwhile the kettle is unattended
And hot and I can't breath!

I suppose I deserved this with how much I hated and dreamt of escaping this monkey..

But sometimes karma simply comes back around and
Shows you who the real fool is

The piano is terrified of losing me

The hysteria of doubtful intoxication
Three times I love you
The crooked man howls from the chamber of sleep

Mouthing the sharade of footsteps
Wicked in a large flannel crib and Autumn thyme pavement you look like a golden dream/
and I'm slowly drying up with sorrow
Because you do not see me like I do you
I'm screaming for your heart to listen to me !

Darling sways her legs on some brittle branch,
A barbaric stag whistles the end of time
To you in a vision his eyes say something terrible
And you're convinced of the violent October wind I promise it isnt true!

Some glasswork magic
Persona of a modern man
i cannot sympathise!
Rocks do fall onto the sidewalk and I ignore them as they cut my ankles like an insomnia or dentist

Looking up with wild alert at the headlights reminding one of
Death and that you're not paying attention to anything other than your poetry eating you alive

The occasional raindrop like the sweat coalescing under ur pillow/ A damp nightmare

As you **** that cross eyed stranger I lay in the grass
Feeling empathetic with my lamp as it welcomes me from the rain more than your hungry heart ever could!

I become shielded here
And sorry for myself
Ashamed of myself
And the lonesome mattress of years
Dictated by you and your lavender skin
As it exists in the idealism of the wardrobe of conciousness I suppose it doesn't mean anything real anyways pfft

Do not armor yourself against my arms
They envelope themselves desperate against the fog of a witching hour
You do not see a
Single figure arrowed with your alpine eyes

(run you cloud creature)

And a sudden mother who's sobbing into my shoulder regarding her inadequacy I told her be the best example of good for her CHILDREN and she continued crying and ran towards the pornographic hotel that stole her car keys
(she may have been murdered then I will never know and that thought deeply unsettles me)

We are all a little sad & could be doing better
And more than 65 made beds are in love

I (fabrication)

Arthur Quincy folds his arms together
Sensing that interfering desire again!

Cant shake this fugue
Or forget the bad stuff he used to take/
Its a lingering presence/

The residual ash in his eyes blinking coffins & dazzling premonitions to the other smalltown poets writing in
Their kitchens to the sound of
Wheatgrass dancing outside in June and
A vacuum's warm considerate hum
From upstairs.

Post office on strike and
Cars being made with straw MAN he thinks
What happened here???
The day crossed out with faulty watches
And parkbench *** fantasies
& the crude laughing regular here
Sipping his tea
Wondering if he'll ever be as much a hit with the ladies as he was in the 1970s

Former beggarman Quincy lays himself out in an empty parking lot feeling invulnerable to the snow

As it collects over his shirt he whistles a happy tune from a date he went on before

The great sourness shelled him out of
Social fulfillment.

Now he keeps to himself
Making stories out of his bedroom and
Crying
crying for
His first love &
The laundry place shut down now wheres he gonna go/

Old Quincy used to smoke expensive tobacco but has since decided to save it for whenever he remarries. Or a brilliant morning where the neighbor sleeps in so he can sleep in too.

The view from his window is a continous rotation of wet crows who peer in and for a brief moment see the man's hands to his head making sure his hair hasn't fallen off yet..
House walls heavy with age
expose themselves occasionally
With an after image of past inhabitors,
The essence of their dry lips
Or olive cotton sweaters hanging from a rocking chair,
The enthusiasm of a corner lamp
Unappreciated by all
Past and present.

II (veteran romantic)

Arthur Quincy shelters his mind from strange ideas
Or conspiracy he hasn't "lost it" yet at least!

He has a hobby of painting the active society and
Expresses mood as colorful clouds
Floating out the skull of us to
Blend in an energy pollinating the
Deli and antique shop and yoga studio
V A P O R
to be swallowed by accident and catch the empathic disease of the
Depressed and jubilant simultaneous,
Makes easy living confusing and
Impossible to achieve in an absolute way!
He carries this belief
When interacting with others
Arthur Quincy understands
That balance is key to fulfillment
(so far as his life is concerned)

However, hardly anyone has seem him laugh and so assumes he doesn't have the ability to.
In reality he saves his joy and holds it to lift his lungs from despairing all day long to be released
Late afternoon in the comfort of home
As a display of feral bellows and supernatural ecstasy. This seems somewhat overromantic and exaggerated but someone has claimed to have had the rare pleasure of witnessing it!

Arthur calls the same address once a week, an anonymous voice speaks from the line opposite and while mysterious
It is clear he adores this voice. He adores the unacted subtlety and passion in this voice.
He smiles when he hears this voice which is simply enough.

Nearby those naive poets use Arthur as a muse sometimes too directly
Often referencing rumors of his hermetic life
Or retreating into his headspace
Unrealistically blowing his experiences into fable
And turning even his stirless sleep into a fabulous fruitbasket of language.

On the surface he appears forlorn and
Bitter with the winter gradually molding to his skin. Like anyone can tell you he has felt this before! Haven't you? But through all the stories and impossibilities of Arthur he is reserved in his
Knowing of important things. He is reserved in revealing that he not only knows how music sounds but where music comes from. He never reads the newspaper out of habit to feel in-the-know. He never lies about his feelings or his intentions.
Arthur exists in the
Glow of himself
And persists on breathing the glow of the street,
He is a wordless poet and veteran romantic.

III (funeral)

One day Arthur passed away a few weeks from Thanksgiving.
His name put on the paper he never read
And examined by a young girl
Who was only hearing of him now.

"Arthur C. Quincy/ 73/ passed away this Saturday. To be remembered as a quiet and misunderstood man envigored with the lightness only percieved by a rare and special few"

This description came as a surprise to those who knew Quincy as the claustrophic and uninteresting grump
Who's sidewalk idlings were unexplained and strangely hostile.

He saw the sky and its shifting canvas,
He saw the distant cats leaned on balconies impressed with the daytime ambiguity in firestations and libraries.
He would conjur a grin
From the passive conversation between a mother and her son.
He once saw two strangers fall for each other on the bus! A conjoined sun had bloomed between them.

Just a few attended the funeral. Upon inspection of his house following Arthur's death, someone found a will left for Helen Ashbury. A 55 year old woman who lived a three day drive away in Michigan..An identity to his weekly telephone fantasy!
It assumed all of his belongings to her, among them a military grade flashlight with his carved initials, a photograph of his time as a lumberer signed to "Peter! All the best in Costa Rica" and a copy of W.C Williams collected poems. Where folded on page 206 as part of the poem "Orchestra" was highlighted

"I love you. My heart is
innocent.
         And this is the first day of the world!"

Eventually Helen Ashbury received the news of Arthurs passing, as well as these things.
At the sight of the poem she wept,
the man she only knew through a voice after years of correspondence.
Upon being questioned she refused to explain their meeting in the first place. That was a special time, a time which the public would misinterpret or slander with rumor.
While Arthur wasn't widely loved in the town during his life, he was a popular topic from death on. As more information came out! Serving in world war II and his companionship with a parisian ***,
Who shared the wonder of the rooftop and spoke on the value of tea as a food replacement.
He once met a girl there at a dance and in a show electrified with lust they moved to Lucienne Boyer without the knowledge of who would win the war.
He had a son with her, Who resided in France most of his life as Quincy regrettably
Abandoned their situation to
Pursue other things, in his journal he admits his wish to have connected with him more, referring to his leaving as the worst mistake in his life.
All of this masked behind his firm neutrality. His walk lacking suggestion and his wrist without the delicacy of a painter (not that people knew he painted and so didn't pay attention to anything like that)

He was buried by noon. Some say his son was at the funeral. People gave their partings, and Helen wanted so badly to say goodbye to him. Instead left with his curios and his infinite voice.

IV (i'll be around)

The following year at a yard sale Helen came across a series of musty and used records. In the stack of them was a Cab Calloway compilation. Nestled in his desperate wailings and hi-de-** was the track "I'll Be Around" a slow and patient song that Arthur sang to her once. She recalled that night with ease, and felt her shoulders sink at the thought.
The album was $4, on the drive home she watched the trees shake with the wind, their leaves transluscently pale at the angle she was going. She could feel a weight there in her chest. The weight of him, of his heart supposing itself onto hers magnetically. She rolled down the windows and let the wind surround her, blowing her blonde hair back and forcing her to squint a little.

"I love you. My heart is innocent"

she recalled the poem he left for her. Of course not written by him but it felt as deeply personal as if he had.

"-and this is the first day of the world!"

Helen lifted a cigarette out from her purse. The drag extinguishing immediately as it's trail left the car. A bewilderment slowly consumed her.

Outside the barless
Tired wanderer sleeps

softly under the gutter
Of divine prices
and flocks of birds

Tapping on the mind window to suggest

that it's safe outside for the first time he can remember.

He carries himself like a beast of burden

Adjusting to a new pair of glasses he

never asked for!
The Santa Monica Pier

Flashes up like an express elevator in his childlike remembrances

& Screwdrivers &
heels contact with a hardwood floor

Paid for every month with a hard earned dollar
By a hard working family
Who always had it dogged

& Questioning why ah why he's

Slow with the
  kinks in his back nobody knows his name He
  doesn't know theirs either

He remembers the name of routine
offices & the birdsong of three AM

Removed from physicality by then searching for his kneecaps

N constant intervals of unseen shouting from
A block over or upwards to him

The junktruck tumbles down the black Avenues
Another communist is born

& Yawning has grown into language

Poetic verse misunderstood by many

The ministry on ones heels

& Neon has replaced vinework

He's just tired and can't stop rehearsing apologies

Bo Diddley's Nursery Rhyme as the European bus
Cruises past Chinatown a woman

Takes a clove cigarette out from her shirt
Pocket
Laughing to herself

& It travels towards the street vendor
He's making it
and A phone call interrupts the whole scene

A great glowing ship suddenly materializes
(Nobody pays any attention)

The coffee is strong today

His thoughts are being particularly loud lately

The auburn trees
Collapse their shimmering hue

As the sun releases it's hold
The potted plants are writing eulogies

A child runs thru an Island orchard
His shirt sticks to his skin
And the girl
who in eleven years will marry him

Is fifteen miles away sleeping off a fever
She has hazel eyes

& Her mother works at a hospital
She's an only child

She will smell as a poppies seductive
Stare or an Actress perfume
Autumn is

One week off
The ashtrays are in need of cleaning

The ceiling fans turned off
& The desk fans shelved in familiar
Musty closets

Nobody can remember what heartbreak felt like

As for one premature month that year
Everything was just alright

I (August)

By way of magic theaters
& Volumes of intellectual glitter
& Tragedy in the form of escalator dramas
Replaced with alcoholism and the tile floor in need of cleaning

Bulbs green and vibrant
In accompaniment of nearby mechanical ships/
I'm too spoken and the traffic has been melting against itself for the last three weeks

Doorhandles left empty of the
Torch of lost odors
& Bouquet smiles
& Petrichor thru the window facing the street
A shouting sort
And 25 cents in my back pocket

The dream I had yesterday of Bank Robbery
Solipsism

Also sexuality revealed as
The Camel's endurance
For kind people

Everyone around me in the bookshop starts vocalizing my internal scatterings
& The whole thing becomes surreal
Corso waves as I walk by
I'm afraid if what might happen on acknowledging it

Lamppost summoned and
Violent
Carpet is stained with the footsteps of people you don't want around anymore

Your gigantic ego had a hard time fitting thru the doorframe on exit


II (September)

A woman is reading a japanese book on
Windmills
Cradled by a sweater the tone of
Sunsets

The hour has devolved into silhouttes

An internal voice peaceully sings its way higher into the skull to be remembered/
The melody of September

On the verge of permanence at all times
& feeling it now!

You will never be this shy around
Orchards again,
Once the Hotels quiet down &
Autumn laurel replaces the crow of
Current conciousness

Ur journal is a series of wet shapes
Lucidly mixed with Candlewax air

Have fun transcribing Burmese papers
Or attempting Monkhood in Vermont!

III

It has been easy attending
All these social Funerals
And watching the Hospitals keep busy
As water is drained from countless fountains

Meanwhile a dog with a crooked lung is manufacturing a vivid sense of
Totality with the garden
Tongue out
Unaware of the Sun

And it's difficult to remember something as the very name of Eisenhower
Or flowerbaskets
And tired movies made of silicone and
Aftersex
Or sixteen candles echoing out of an imaginary suite with cigarettes at every table
And green lawns
Barbershop conversation
The reflection of the sun in special trees
Or my best friend Jesus Christ
Or the smell of the theater that one day with the cynics who just got back from a tennis match and barbwire still laced delicately around their thoughts and
Nihilism
And automotives
And priestess Jane or Henry's gloomy doppelganger who reads alternative magazines and loves the aesthetics behind broken glass
And fine tuned musical instruments

It's difficult to remember
Lonesome Fridays smoking on a park bench trying to finish the puzzle
Or synagogues you've never been in
Or insurance
Or newspaper articles detailing the misadventures of Mr. City
(Of course of course! Take your shoes off at the door and make yourself at home)
We're tossing all our sewage into the ocean
that's far from clean as it
LOOKS anymore these days
That's anything
And everything except for the glowing mountains seen faded and wintry behind Apartments and the
"Glorious Mexican House of Spices"
Never been in there either

It's difficult to remember
Times of Mr Twin Sister
Or Joan Jett in the hallway
In a highschool who's psychology classrooms have become a time capsule in the ground/
Or the gentle skinny ******
Wearing Broadway makeup and
Kafka tattooed on his shoulder
I like his hat
He looks at me suspiciously
Or the guy who is yelling his order at the counter when it's quiet here anyways
Or the mariner who has a hobby of the saxophone
Or 1970s *******
Or the sheepskin bikeseat fad that's yet to come but I'm predicting it now!
Or two dollars and twentyseven cents at the beginning of Allen Ginsberg's America
"I've given you all and now I'm nothing"

It's difficult to remember
The Oriental
Sacramento flies
Midnight Moon
Quarter to four
"The Immortalization Commission"
Remodelled hotels downtown
Where mandalas on the floor became a
Tiger lily luminous
And the kimono is yesterday's painting/
Dearest Darling
When I was feeling down!
A staircase in reverse (??)
The sound a kiss makes
It's difficult to remember
Colleen's earrings
Or Washington State
Or air conditioners in Bali
The Indian ocean's daybreak hymn
To Seminyak
Or whatever happened to Steve from the Airplane out of Taiwan
On 3 days awake
Hello Kitty nursing stations
****** (Kubrick's version)
Cardboard taking up half my bedroom
It's difficult to remember until I jot it down and then its a sudden forever
Sunshine Superman in a cafe spontaneous
drawings with someone I just met who has some ******* attitude/
Who hops fences and has feral ideas
People! En Masse! Te Amo!
You're all in wolven liberty
And vague postulators
And holy prostitutes for the dollar
Sad eyed intellectuals
With undergarments made of breakfast cereal/
Seaferry poetry is different from
Trestle in August poetry
Or henna handshakes
Or the Napoleonic era
Sweet Cherry Pie
The tulip's tongue
Garabajal
Cloudy first day of July
Was hotter yesterday
But not too hot

It's difficult to remember
Antiquity
The pale horse Studebaker outside the clinic
With a glossy red trim and **** I wish that was my ride
Andy Warhol's exploding plastic inevitable
Nearsightedness
Angels and their ability to shower with a a snap of their fingers
Distant harp music
Better him than me
Bananas almost ripe
Green aquatic
Reclusive junkies
Palomo's appliances
Questions for the next time
How much I like what you like and how I like that you like what I like
Ahh that's not my bus
I'm trying to get to the city!
That one quote Socrates is known for about knowing nothing as true wisdom
Supermarkets being built on top of liquor stores burned down a while back
Monopolies
Tragedies
"No Love Lost"
THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL
Your guess is as good as mine
Never tried to eat Asian food in Asia
It was all pasta and good cider that tasted like pineapple
Rain hitting the window and I'm
Drowsy again
God Save The Trees!
Curly hair looks good on boys
Torn up blinds
Queer as a three dollar bill
If Bill costs 3 dollars I'm sure he's caught something better safe than sorry
Sage advice
I'm the very model of a modern major general
Golden yen and international currency
Incense in the bedroom and how good it smells
There's my bus! Applying for a better job than the one I got now
But that's how it always is right?
Chasing satisfaction
1007 apt
Porch ornaments
Unique names
Unique style le style
The extra charge on foreign ATMs
Cordoroy polo shirts
Flooding in New York!
When someone's face screams *******
"Slippery when wet"
Dine N Dash
Grass gone yellow
Confidence in dyed hair and capes as long as wedding gowns
But less expensive
Doors that always seem to be locked and I'm wondering 20 year later what's behind them?
Albino animals
White thoughts as clouds or
Abstractions
Weathers nicer in Florida but who cares
Festivities this early in the day
Automatopeia
Do sad orphanages still exist?
Just like the movies
Midnight in mirrors
That sick puppet at the shoe shop used
To know how to really hammer it down
And now he's weak and forgotten
Never heard the words of a true prophet only Oceania
Or the private temple near Apollo Bay
Like Japanese gardens behind that gate
Will I ever see it
Make a proud example outta ya misbehavior
Form without function
Exhausted spiritualism
*** Kettle Black
negative photographs of dark rooms
And there's laughing coming from SOMEWHERE
Essays on kleptomania
Had a bad dream I became a cliche
Surrounded by other freaks and there was a lovely ***** I fell in love with her
We married in Oregon by the sea her name was rosy
***** rosy
Check your mailbox for nails
And what you don't wanna hear/
If you were a vegetable you'd be organic!
Empire
Satirical bubble gum
Satori
Linda Lovelace and her special party trick
That's someone's fantasy
Diamond in the rough
Mister guy with two black eyes frequents the adult playhouse
Hes fully stocked on fishnet leggings
He's too proud to put them on himself but
Has nobody else around
Boo hoo
Swigs back the whiskey and trips down the stairs getting a third black eye in the process
Marion came by with her dog the other day
Wanted her box of clothes back but he loved to sniff them to remember her
But she wouldn't have it

"Honey I'm going to call the police!"

"Ah they don't give a **** they have bigger things to worry about"

"Yeah you got that right shrimp **** enjoy my unwashed *******"

And she never came back again
He started losing the vertebrae in his spine 1 by 1 and you know where this is going
I won't say he was a poor man because he had it all coming to him the *******
But he coulda had a better start if you ask me.

It's difficult to remember
And even more difficult to forget
After the fact

Seagull opera
Giganticism
Portrait of the artist as a young man
Losing one's pencil when the best idea of your life drops down from heaven and into your sorry head
Signs graffitied to have funnier meanings
Cruelty
Impassive
The Loyal Lioness
And Bangladesh has too many kitchens
And not enough dishes
When I was young I used to say Island as "is-land"  
Which is true it is land
But the Europeans probably stole it from somebody else anyways/
I left my future behind
And objects in the mirror are closer than they appear
Im no illusionist
I'm terrified of the cracken
Father feels the same way about
Hotels
Why bother/
This has been going on and on for a while are you tired yet
Is your patience being tested
Mine isn't because this wasn't an all-at-once kind of rambling
It's extremely important to laugh at least
Once a day
Otherwise you'll find yourself a politician
In no time at all
Rockefeller
(         ) Quaint home to die in
I think
Trains create great music
Float on
Sink into yourself
Roses in a crooked alley
That's people
Busy busy busy busy
Let's describe a situationist
I'm not a fan of bright colors on clothes
Your best shade is blue
Bricklayers transcription of Don Quixote to a skyscraper
Rocket thyme
& Garden
Erratic children's
Insomnia
The doorbell repeatedly
Vancouver riots/ I saw that live on the news!
Pictionary with the surrealists
N Dada TV set MC Escher
Antenna
You're in the Twilight Zone now
Dear Ramona
I'm trying to make it up to you
With a brightness only seen when you're ready to see it so please for the love of God don't blame me when it's not appearing
The tapestry hidden
Keep your blankets clean
And avoid hospitals unless you're fine with fishbowls & the halogen
The water gestapo
Storage lockers full of unacted plays and
Antique microwaves
Emitting the nostalgia of the cold war era
And what a waste of time that was /
Walter Wanderleys presence in Autumn universities
The opening of Vivre sa Vie
Salvador Dali's pluvial taxi
Lightbulb epiphanies
Aquariums and their protestors
Zebras in the shade
Two wrongs dont make a right
Elizabethan theater
Saloon shootouts in a fever dream
I lost and bled out all over the rustic wooden floor
A maiden reached out for me and El Paso did play I woke up and pretended nothing happened/
Funerals for bad People who did bad things
My first memory of a cat beneath the mattress
Hello Dolly!
Auditory learning
Psychotherapy
Lillian the landlady lost her ladle and labeled little Lyle as a lair
The Black panther movement
Reading symposium some years ago and
Making note that Phaedo was still my favorite dialogue/
Zen Buddhism
Xoxo xoxo
The day Gypsies were replaced with
Surface ****** appetite
And not the real thing
Newspaper clippings
Hypnotism when all other options are out
Mystical visions of sidewalks
And the love of your life stepping through a door you've never seen
Maybe Yes No I Don't Know
Creature comforts
Che Guevara's problem is that his beard made him too easy to recognize
(Also that little hat!)
Chinese cough medicine didn't work
For long I still wheeze sometimes
Domestic violence thru the wall
Ceiling fan probably doesn't even work!
Dimpled laughter
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
In skytrains to Commercial
Bermuda in her mind
And courtesy in her voice
I'm no Arthur Rimbaud
But you already knew that
Alcazar of Seville
Filling up the shipbottle
Here's your paradise
Now relinquish it as it is
False!
Hare Krishna
Nowhere Fast
El Diablo and the
Portofino loaf left rotting on the countertop
Latin children speak of the sacred viper
You'll hear of it after this but we'll never see what the ******* meant
Heads alternating round the social current
Of my lively city
There's a dog soaking up the rain
And songs are made in honor of
Recent catastrophes
Trials are dealt
Cards cast to the gutter
New York quiets down for the news of another war
You scratch my back I'll scratch yours
Skeleton key
Ballad of the last wailing zoo
THE ATRIUM
Complexity in simplicity
That's how Brainard got me!
Elderly overcoats
Hiding purest LSD
Is a fan of Hawaiian T shirts
And a communist
What if I was a Freemason
Or owned a tanning salon
Faint crimson
What did Marv look like again?
"You're surrounded by people who love you"
Coffee when one needs it
GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY
Tattoos on the wandering man
Oriental chimes and the people who own them
Bus stop regulars
Vines overtaking power lines
The hypnogogic state
Strawberry light softening
The mind
Sister Ray LOUDLY PROCLAIMING
doitdoitdoitdoit
Passing the graffiti n Pluto neon
Halal wide awake another Saturday
Where's the Karaoke
Flashing by here
Those who find comfort in a bridal scavenger hunt
Or expensive beer
And here comes the hooded clown
Clamoring about his favorite
Loudspeaker
Telling me my time is soon and the noise
Drowns out the drowsy bliss
After hour spirits the perfect time for
Writing and trying to read distant Chinese
Indecision on the tip of the tongue
"NOW WHO IS THAT KNOCKING
ON THE CHAMBER DOOR?
COULD IT BE THE POLICE?"

I'm completely off the topic
And into Apartment lobby photosets
Low battery phone calls
Confessions
Nauseated reverb
Trying to see the attachment people got with bingo halls
And moving companies
Ah no luck again
Eve is at it with her showtunes
Halfway methodology
Triage
Paisley headbands left
Distraught on the quivering
Heater
Dwindling sunsets
We're truly disciples of the moon spirit which grants us more energy
(This is according to a drunk I met one night)
Or ***** old men
When the horizon is engulfed with
A winking cinder
Suitcase at the door
Last time
First time
Magician never reveals his fetishes
(They all have to do with bags under your eyes)
Employment office dramas of my friend the one who blinded a social worker
And the one who blamed Islam
And the one whos philosophy entirely consisted of Spooky Action at a
                                            DISTANCE
Parisian riots
Queer youth
Didn't make the team! Jester
'cross the hall who's beard suggests
Ishmeal n car battery n expired vegetables n rain which crosses the line n
***** cranberry n
Poorly fitted suits n
Harsh pigment n incense shops n
Bocca     secret towns
With churches more beautiful than any you'd find in your own city
n the cultural market
Xylophone ear to ear
Soul cleansing starting at only
$89 (with a 6 month guarantee)
Sophie's birthday and her picnic at Victory Park
The nearby bums trying to sell tea mugs and
Loose wires beside gated convenience stores
I'm an Island away attempting a poem
And never bought a scratch n win
Or heard the same song more than seven times in a row or been in a column
Or escaped the washhouse
Invested in a birdcage for next year
Been to a palm reading
Visited Oasis
Smoked salmon
Told anyone else about Montana
Screamed the things I'd like to scream
** Word of the day
Or kissed a lunatic or swallowed the corpse of yesterday
I keep her on my neck until
I'm too anxious to let go
Counting streetlights
Jeans worn in and faded to be sent off to
A lonely caffeine addict
Christmas Eve I'll be reading a postcard from San Francisco
Asking the same questions
My imagination is made of a different material than last week
Now it's the same color as your hair
HEY that's a good pickup line to use in the heart of the Canadian Embassy
Drinking discarded music resembling a sweater you may have said YES to if it wasn't so unsure of itself
And now Mr. Acker Bilk ascends thru the window of an August home
Like a lazy hornet
I'm still lost without identification
Or a nice belt
As happens when one uses a quality item too casually
How did uphill suddenly seem so downhill?
I'll claim a waterfall
For SALE that inevitable Indonesia
Greyhound O another greyhound O another greyhound
I'm fretting too much about not enough
Delayed the Airport and the yellow question

????

II

What if I knew how to read the curb?
Or translate drunken droll
What if I was never tired again and could
REALLY do anything I set my mind to?
What if I was the first cigarette that cured cancer instead of caused it?
What if I could end superstition
And walk underneath any ladder I wanted?
What if I could make it with a young Audrey Hepburn!?
What if I stopped pretending to be a microphone and got on with "it"
What if the grocery store closed later
And I opened earlier?
What if parking lots werent so sad
All the time?
What if gravity simply had enough of exotic birds and specifics?
What if we stopped trying to recreate what is truly lost?
What if foreign children embraced
Wasting time instead of
Midnight starry bicycles
And the antics of a monk
Disguised as a romantic?

There are those that worship God
And those who worship the Sun
And those who worship nothing at all
But I suppose on the last bus
We're all the same exhausted
Voice who can't wait for next pay day
What is an empty bank?
Or authenticity
What is there to prove anymore?
I hope I don't die tonight and regret
Being impulsive for once
You're a smart shadow
And a dull character
Pushing the last of the daisies
Get the lamp to turn on again
Give the pavement something to look forward to with your walk
Be consistent in being inconsistent
If there's a word there's a ***** and a poem for it!
We all oughta worship
Nothing at all except
Clarity
Compassion with ones neighbor who either forgot the pay the electricity bill or couldn't afford to
We're a swimmin

Entering Summer's sweet solstice where
daytime has won the war,
children born beneath the raspberry moon, to be reborn and reborn again midst stillness.

Here I see
old arms stained with
glass and vermilion
sticky alcohol and memories of
parades illuminated in New York.

whole city sulking in it's own gentrified poverty
looking at itself in a faded mirror,
silver wrinkles
kissed by June's many modern gentleman
(in quotations)                                                    Th­e lonely towers howl
                                                            ­                  benevolently

transit thru factory neighborhoods and catching up on O'hara,
fatigued by staying up to watch dry mornings repeated.

looking for meaning in various signs
adverts
columns
shop names
and streetcorner dramas

the same strange song plays!
picking up where you left off at the clothing store or the laundromat
it's a soft tune I'm not complaining but variety would be nice
this anonymous song/here it is/again/
the one that plays in the background of our sleep

a child is wrapped in red silk sprawled out on the pattern seats of the bus, he pretends to be unconscious
but I know better
gasoline keeps our eyes alert

Few days later I'm embraced by rooftop wine,
a sleepless night watching American Graffiti beside a
red stone on a mantle plugged into the wall,
The Mamas and Papas
"Spanish Harlem" in the living room
with a bought wrap from the cafe up the block
and the morning is mysterious and uplifting

"awoo
lalala
lalala
lalala la               there is a rose in Spanish Harlem"

we're tired people that see enough in the world to stay awake
there's a story here
and briefly written or explained pasts  
that will soon be replaced with whatever humid
accompaniment lurks loudly beyond the doorway.

A distant man with a knack for the harmonica searches for his cigarettes
by empty diners
and psychic shops of Christmas colors
vibrating lucidly 'cross the sky,
and he can apparently hear
the feedback to an amp used by a man
that changed his life
H E N D R I X
I snapped a few pictures of him
I wish him all the best

he told us of a past-Jamaica
and the dreams he brought there,
a girl he fell in love with
and her incredible ***
and I mean just incredible
you wouldn't believe this ***
and he never got with her
or the girl who used to frequent the church here
but he's staying optimistic, and
so am I man.

So am I.

Heater hallways shake beneath the blue sky/
Apartment flash of childhood howling thru top floor window

Pink memories and ambient music
while stoplights blink
for their empty streets.
I'm wandering alone in this town
and the cat is sleeping off his traumas of being a man

"COLOR VIBE
LIMITED
TICKETS
AT ESQ"                   half a sign away from meaning but the abstraction
                                  means something in itself

Black hand pointed to the doorbell of the cosmos
all lit up
I'm present in a quiet
fluorescent shopping complex on the way home,
I like that anonymous kitchens are still unified and yellow/
these pattern lives remain/
optimists I'll never know/
lovers that browse the antique shop up my street and have a certain
fondness for the velvet hat on the rack

(that's     how    I    feel   about   this    whole    neighborhood)

"NO SMOKING
WITHIN 7 METERS"

Means nothing to the morning before bussiness hours

You were there
underneath strange elevators and
London's tragedy made the news
I don't know what to say                    but

I guess it doesn't matter now does it
(Hillcrest Park's ethereal flow catches the blue room
and makes my cheeks warm)

We cleared the air,
we didn't but we did.

"What have you been up to?"

"Ah, just keeping around"

"Yeah?"
"Yeah"

The voices across the hall a blur behind the door
I
barefoot
             walked down the steps/
                    into the bathroom/
      looked into the mirror/
                     told myself that I was myself/
I still need that reassurance.

Melody melody melody
melody melody
                                               in the skull
it's a calm sound and a violent feeling
I've been kinda sad about it all day now.

(Laying there
the room has vanished)

mute the flower screaming from the television
and love's been paused again
for Summer months.

and after a
death nightmare like that
I can't help but think of Corso's gravestone
and how much the clouds really do
mean to me

O how important
tattoos of ailed hands become.

appreciating
the flowers of May
as trees become aware
of the cold every year,

me, teary eyed on waking
and realizing
what people close to him must be going through now.

Active motion
act in motion
spark the plug
and speak with love                  smalltown rain
occasional clouds                       bus stop lights out
hazy thoughts                             sway your imagination back and forth with
                                                      violin­ and incessant heartbeats

I adore you saxophone
and appreciate the pattern of your voice
there's a little something for everybody here.

(at least for those that act on their own
volition!!)

existential essays among
the Spanish backpackers belongings (Camus' Myth of Sisyphus)
the sound is dazzled with itself/
my attention wanders to the distant mountains
where snow still sits meditating on
my dreams and your dreams.

(The more we get together the happier we'll be!)

In a flash the coffee shops close and large homes from decades ago
are physically moved to other lots
and cranes observe the night
a little ways down my street
across from the Apartment I lived in around 2002
(My cousin Rachel came over while I was sick with summer fever)

EVERY STRANGER SLEEPS
I WONDER WHAT THEY DREAM
I WONDER IF THEY ARE DREAMING RIGHT NOW

painted animals wait idly in the fields of parched grass
for another bomb to go off
and I've forgotten the static of the TV
I once saw them in

May day May
day
I can't believe how hot it's been outside!
I'm forcing myself to be confident enough to wear a T shirt
(ah) at the line in the grocery store the woman ringing thru my
soon-to-be plastic bags
she's a child of her cigarettes and a mother
of her ashes. Her hair salted and her face like tired glass
I'm so sorry
I'm so sorry that love is hard sometimes
(and o so soft)

I was at the sleepy supermarket once
(in an imaginary place)
and a child was with her parents and noticed the expiry on a 2% milk
she asked
"What does this mean?"
her mom looked down at her to what she was pointing to and replied
"That's when the milk goes bad. When you can't use it anymore"

They continued down the aisles and she asked
"Do people go bad too?"
I don't know what caused her to think this so early
it's such a shame dear,
her mom frowns in that way when you're trying to hide it.

"Yes, you gotta drink the milk fast, but some people drink up life too slow and it leaves them sour"

and upon leaving back to my mattress
I never saw which direction they went or where I wound up
after accepting that my heroes would never appear.

PASSING the elementary school I once attended
during a windstorm
throwing tantrums during assemblies and making
friends with car accidents.
I try to remember names and only Sean, Alexis, Daniel and Dean
come to mind...

..So long to childhood vagueness in
days deceased to
trashcan calendars
it was nice to see you
but I really must be going now.

                   (TODAY IS A UNIQUE SHADE OF YELLOW)

Flashing Monet garden blur,
central eye signals up to the core of the brain
until entire body shudders silently beneath the brightness
of banana visions and white blood cells
circling a small dot which fires
down a shorter path in this large bleeding space.

Pupils rolled into sockets,
losing sense of body and of self/
just a floating consciousness/
vivid rainbow lacework pattern into
a vibrating eye
staring back at me fluctuated
in flashes of
flower and
numb fingers
asleep
with absence of mind.

Soft mechanical shapes
swirl about the washing machine,
my head no longer attached to the body/split down
de/
capitat/ed/
consciousness wanders, circles back ethereally
to the room behind me
sees clearly
and expands out thru the window into the grey light of the morning
to see nobody awake
and the vagrant eidolon
can feel me staring back at it for once,
a presence not felt before..
..and the hum in my body rushes up to my head,
intense vague visions,
the weight of my feather-sensation
increases to point of fear,
disorientated upon opening eyes
and centralizing myself
to the room
and universal position.
                                                       ­ Breathing deeply.

"O!
That the earth
Had to be given to
You
This Way"* - Charles Olson
                
Impermanence is romantic because you
have to make the most of love
while it's still there.

Music doesn't play for birds anymore.

I'm having a conversation with myself
that has never stopped, and honestly, I want him
(the other guy) to shut up!

Recounting recent Vancouver,
humid commercial streets all lit up in midday
cafes cafes cafes
Sweet Cherubim with it's tobacco free cigarettes
and appearance of smallest India!
Traincarts full of familiar faces as time makes these tracks easier to travel.
My shoes are stained with fences, Seagulls do nothing but
complain and **** beautifully!

Here I am now, April 16th, Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal, I can smell the overcast and the expensive perfume behind my seat.
We have the French tourists, Chinese grandmothers,
and millenials wearing thick red lipstick, hair braided back
"What the heck"
to something by the SNB (more coffee)
read Gerry Gilbert's stuff, continuing "MOBY JANE" and it's
refreshing to be engaged with a local poet who makes
direct references to
Nanaimo, Vancouver, Victoria, etc.

Wind is calm today,
I find most poets go into the details of their daily lives and perceptions, while I've made it a habit to try and write about everyone's lives all at once, even when I don't know a **** thing about them (but that's the most interesting part to me)
anybody could by anybody else
who's to say?
I bet I am not as interesting as some may think,
I bet I am not as interesting as I may think,
I can't land a solid date!
aboard the last ferry I saw someone with the face of Andy Warhol and now I see someone with the hair of Andy Warhol.

OK OK
Back to Vancouver,
shorts while it rains outside (not me)
Gastown tangerine reflections off buildings &
my friend points out the non profit office she works in weekly/
10 floors or more of archaic steelwork/heavy foundation/smoothed edges/copper ceiling.
I hardly miss the smell of this place (or rather some areas of it)
the ***** and suited cologne, frequent pizzerias, vintage two-floor aged wood shops, perspiring neon Granville hysteria, Vogue Theater advertising a future appearance by Parov Stelar, I think Robin Pecknold was here recently as well but hell if I can remember the comings & goings of everybody!
Raga band plays beneath the window cleaners one year earlier emitting
audible visions of Calcutta's disorganized theatrics.
Some of these skyscrapers look almost imaginary in their modern sheer.
Glass and more glass with solar panels added in/absorbed heat and people's despondent attention.

Big blow-ups of spectacular strangers, *** is in high demand and marriage has become commodity///

"THE FUTURE IS NOW
COME AND CATCH IT BEFORE IT LEAVES WITHOUT YOU
AS IT WILL APOLOGETICALLY,
INNOVATION/WIRES UPON WIRES/LOSS OF CEMENT/A CEMETERY OF GLASS PANELS AND **** ADVERTISING THAT CUTS OFF TOO QUICKLY TO READ"

"EACH AND EVERY CHILD IS LOOKING UP AT THESE MODELS AND FALLING INTO THE MESH OF SURFACES AND FACELESS BODIES/NICE JAPANESE CARS/THE KIND THAT DON'T NEED GAS OR EVEN DRIVERS"

"WE'RE ALL LIVING LONGER AND DYING EARLIER/WHERE IS IT HAPPENING NOW/WHERE WILL THE RECENTLY WED GO FOR SECLUSION? WHERE WILL THE OLD GO TO RETIRE WITHOUT THE FEAR OF BEING FORGOTTEN AND ABUSED BY THEIR FAMILIES AND CARETAKERS?"

"WHERE IS THE COLOR ON THE CLOCK?
DON'T EVEN GLANCE AT YOUR NEIGHBOR/
WE'RE ALREADY BEHIND BARS \\"

"WHERE IS UNIVERSALLY PREFERABLE BEHAVIOR?
WHERE IS EDUCATION?
WHERE IS MY SELF
AND YOUR SELF?
WHERE'S THE NEXT TRAIN TO MATERIAL RELEVANCY?
CAN I FIND THE ADDRESS IN THE PHONE BOOK?
DO I REALLY HAVE TO WALK THAT FAR?
**** THAT!"

"MY FINGERS ARE WILTING/
FLOWERS ARE DEFENSELESS AGAINST AIRPLANES/
DINERS ARE GOOD FOR REST STOPS AND NOT MUCH ELSE"

"HEY COWBOY
YOU DON'T WANT THOSE FILTERED POISONS
YOU WANT THESE ONES!"

"HEY DARLING DOES THE RING FIT THE EGO?"

"HEY ******* WATCH MY BUMPER!"

"I FORGOT TO FILL IN MY TAX SHEETS ANOTHER MONTH IN A ROW THEY'LL FINE ME AGAIN"

"HOW DO YOU DEFINE "UNIQUE"

"I CAN'T HEAR MY COMMERCIALS OVER THE VACUUM CAN YOU PLEASE KEEP IT DOWN"

"THE BIRDHOUSE FINALLY ROTTED TO THE POINT IT'S FALLEN APART"

"I CAN'T AFFORD MY DAUGHTERS PIANO LESSONS I WISH I WAS A BETTER FATHER"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T TAKE MY CAT HOME WITH ME TILL I PAY UP FRONT?  I DON'T HAVE THE MONEY RIGHT NOW/YOU'RE KEEPING HIM AND CHARGING ME PER NIGHT?
'no sir if the cat is young we usually find a way around euthanasia'
'thank god for that'"

"CAN'T WAIT TO GET TENURE/
ABOUT TIME"

"A SALES MAGAZINE RECOMMENDED TO ME PASTEL LITERATURE IT WAS SENSELESS AND LACKED IN ANY INTELLECTUAL VALUE BUT SHOULD I BE SO SURPRISED?"

"MY HOUSE IS GOING UP IN VALUE! now how can I implement this value to my life?"

"BUY NOW/SAVE MORE/SPEND LESS/
PAY OFF YOUR LOANS EARLIER/
WE ARE NOW /CLOSED/"

An Orca is alongside the ferry,
it's a lovely sunset beyond the series of islands to reach Schwartz Bay
this afternoon. I put the book down, stretch myself out on the seat, arms relaxed to my sides.
I only write the poems I don't need to think about.
Here I am, so distant from shopping carts
or drums or physical isolation, people talk of travelling
to New York and Italy, a group of young girls console their friend who's being bullied (I have a bad habit of eavesdropping)
There's people snapping pictures of the whale, now stopping as it
returns to the blue mirror.
Days never tie up their loose ends, instead it's up to the day after that, and so the next one, yadayada.

Suddenly the weight of this year floods in,
a specter of eager fields, goodbyes,
and leaving myself behind.
Where am I going?

Everyday the weather tastes like Amusement Park,
drinking a glass of milk right after brushing my teeth
reflects nice pop art, worthy of being hung on an imaginary wall!
she loves me
she loves me not
she loves me
she will riot,
surely!
I can already hear the fire.                 Where in the world is she now?
Making angels in the Moroccan sand or... (well that's just it, if I had any idea I'd tell you)
                                      "I hear she lives in a big heritage home!
                                       struck thirteen various colors, making
                                       paintings with her heart!"

                                      "No, no.. you got it all wrong! She's
                                       chewing on crayons and spitting out
                                       watermarks! Something to do with art, tho
                                       she was always fond of that stuff"

I'm walking past a bygone stucco house with a bold red sign plastered on the backyard entrance gate, it says
"BEWARE OF DOG"          across the street, a woman walks her Yorkie
                                               n' I laugh to myself.

Everything feels like icecream cones
or romance movies, I don't know.
All this traffic is flashier in the sunshine,
the leaves on trees are glossy, just like Indonesia!
(I miss it still)
Mailboxes have sudden whales on them, decorated with the ocean
or seashells or bikes leaned on an ivory fence          and something
as simple as a song can take you to a hot place where you can get away with wearing anything!
Maybe an exotic hat..

People always asking me, first thing they say
"Oh oh oh where is she now??"
your guess is as good as mine
I'm not gonna go looking she doesn't
want to be FOUND see
that ruins the whole point..
                 and really when I think about it
                 all of us are slowly disappearing

These are the days of bus stops without needing a coat, journal entries I find impossible to decipher in the months past when they were written,
                 souvenirs and misplaced phone numbers..
                 slowly evaporating to time
                 +  the sacred cross-continental.
Days of leaving my umbrella behind
to hang on the dusty closet handle,
yellow fading out,
that too, bygone.

Donovan's "Ferris Wheel" resonating thru my bedroom backdrop

                           "A silver bicycle you shall ride
                      To bathe your mind in the quiet tide"  

The bicycle comes closer by the day/
catching the heat of nearby July/
reflecting my decisions on it's mercury surface/

Somehow, my naive midnight Tofino phonecall to an
eyeless air been answered here,
in a different way than I expected
but no less appreciated.
Thank you.

Sunlight
                        kaleidoscopic/
             hue of auburn            
mirror
                    nearby      the       shaded opal porch/

burning   bulb machinery       makes the whole     living room       wider/
                               I wake and remember
                              dreaming that I broke my nose/

"The Art of Looking Sideways" on my desk
the bookshop explosive PIN                      The Price is Right coffee mug
(dad got it in California 2008)
                  outside looking in thru
         the bedside window/
                                                               dusty blinds
stone faced from sleep/
           thoughts are still wandering Luang Prabang
                    gathered to the streets to give alms to the boys practicing
Asceticism yet still
                                         obsessed with love
                                         whether they know it yet or not/
open my front door
in this basement suite
                the brick is bright and blinding
                 squint my eyes
              tho it's lovely           the spiders
            hover camouflaged in hedges separating
my house from
the other house/                   I'd like to see Laos in person one day
beyond spirit
to get sunburned
                              and somewhat holy
write my poetry
in front of Haw Kham's
aureate walls jeweled with palm green/
lucid thoughts/
I'm a pilgrim in my paracosm/

Morning tea, sat down, Cafe Terrace at Night to my left
and to my right
            the hazy lamp that has a shade textured like
             a gas planet
May is 'round the starry bend/
Cherry trees are more comfortable now I think
and that's fine/
Met a gypsy on the bus two nights ago
she wished me a happy life
I hope so
                                     ... and likewise to you/

A) Sometime
     Somewhere
     Someone
                       ....                                (written by me on the guest log in Spartacus Books' public bathroom)

B) I am perceiving people perceiving people
and all at once, a bird flies overhead!

C) HYPER PIANO BOUNCES FROM THE SPRINGTIME PAVEMENT!! condominium instruments reach out like satellites to the soul for any who'll listen to it's song of a time before

D) Where I witnessed my own dejection, wandering in nightly streets cement-eyed and forlorn, I sought to escape this Western cavalcade with a solitary year in Vietnam which didn't become anything more than an idea, but this was pushed under the rug for India (which is still on my mind!) which was then replaced by the thought of living in Bathurst, NSW, AUS (I'll get to why in a poem or other format of writing in times to come) I have named the place I once saw thru a vivid dream or a crystal ball which to some may mean the same thing

E) "DUCK! AND COVER!" we've all seen that cold war propaganda film with the turtle, seems so ridiculous now, wouldn't have worked anyways

F) Kripaya ek glass paani dijye (this means "please, give me a glass of water" in Hindi, which could be a valuable sentence to know considering India can get very hot, but when you remember how unhealthy their ((at least unfiltered)) water is, I may never use this)

G) I don't know which is crazier, those who feigned insanity to avoid war, or war itself

H) George Foreman named all his kids George Foreman (what a ******* egomaniac) I would grill him on that if I ever met him because seriously what a weird decision, how their mother was okay with that  is beyond my understanding.

I) Here comes July, with it's sweating mobs and many humid funerals

J) Poetic visual aestheticism (in terms of the actual layout line to line)

As one line
drops into
another line and
keeps dropping.

(determined by what Ginsberg called Mind Breaths, given to phrase being written, drop line to add emphasis to words of higher importance or topic phrases, as to almost introduce them in a way not blended with the previous line)

I) O! birds, who are up at the early hours of the morning, I am beyond glad/grateful that I can hear your hymns before everyone else has woken up

J) I think Vonnegut had something unique going on in Breakfast of Champions, especially that bit with the illustrated ******* that looked more like an asterisk

K) The trees outside are green again..
     The Windex bottle above the toilet is green,
     My sheets are green,
     This color I associate with the word "APRIL" is green

     There's a faint glimpse of green in my eyes,
     And a hint of green in the garden nearby,
     A lot of green in this poem (?) which may not be considered a poem but ******* if you happened to think that!
      
      Lastly, for now, I'm no longer feeling blue, and I guess that's a little green, too.

L) is for LOSER

M) ..did Joe Brainard just write a Colgate advertisement in the middle of his work? What is this I didn't pay for commercials..I don't WANT advertising present in my books! I see them everywhere else!
ah...

O) is for open mouth

P) Spontaneous prose acting as an honest/direct look into the meditated (or pure) form state of thought of that who wrote the prose. The book itself being a literal time capsule for a moment of consciousness who's creator may now be deceased.
Also
those who have their thoughts, images, ideas in their head > transferred to U who is now sharing those images but in a subjective way, seeing the settings or characters differently > person then writes their OWN ideas inspired from the previous writers = collaborative consciousness (also a form of time travel)

Q) is for questioning the rigidity of the political structures around you and the flaws it presents for the working class

R) is for RSVPing yes at the wedding between your hypothetical best friend now with the person you've been in love with for years. Slowly it kills you inside, this point of no return, something out of a grand and tragic love story (which isn't a love story because the love was not between you and that person but rather your hypothetical best friend) ****! you slam your fist to the table or the wall and it's all hopeless. But then comes the acceptance of the situation, moving on from it the best you can even if it presents itself as a shadow from this point on. If you've ever been thru something like this I deeply apologize as the cruelty of the world is indecisive, I for one haven't, but I am only turning 20 this year, which would also explain why I made this whole scenario mentioned above hypothetical

S) is for SHHH!

T) is for the constant presence of televisions in today's homes

U) is for UNIVERSE

V) is for...

W) is for upside-down M

X) is for xeroxing you slowly rolling up your ******* and mailing the series of pages to your ex (if you're an *******, which people also xerox maybe)

Y) is for why and also where when what who and how

Z) is for ZZZZZZZzzzz
zzzzz
zzzz
zzz
z

Forest phantom imagery
haunting stereophonic instrumentals
from Murals
whispering     on in nights    fine tent
wrapt up in my sleeping bag and only hearing dynamite as clouds
pass into the afterlife and
the moon has blossomed
the ocean!
Whole Blue Cliff Record lit in here on a bright canvas,
trees can see me saving paper,
Asian telltales, poetics,
and Buddhist Zen philosophy
swirls in my Mystic/Sombrio harp-brain
vivid by lucid shrillness
(achey wakey!!)
Turn the pillow
snap a mental image of that modern monk,
imaginary in his waterfront Salvation Army and his
Glass Temple and his
blasted literature.
His tearful dreams, logical processes... so that it's okay (zzz) always (zzzzz) what's that up there, Shiva?
I am atom, you are ATOMIC
There's a difference here I promise (ASTRONOMICAL)

The waves demand their presence to be known by periodic lion-like clamor, my lips are dry from fireside cider and absolute darkness fills up this space like water, oh cosmic libertine! Snap their starless net to catch the sea and a luminous fish which I may be presented with like inky flashes of thought courtesy of the streetlight moon who's pale properties signal GO
to those willing to decipher it's surface from this far away..
All the quiet beat down trees murmur muffled truth.

This truth is only available to dogs and Christ,
but not me, not any normal soul who's mortal vision is too blurred to make anything out of yet..this Springtime tapestry just a fragment
to an ETERNAL NOISE
which may be faintly audible past the waves
who try their best to stamp it out of perception.
But I am feeling particularly meditative tonight!
I'll at the very least stroke the thin top layer of absolute knowledge
and do so with heightened, trained consciousness..
when the moment is right
which may not be now
(definitely not now)
quelled by flesh and sleepy daze,
onyx silk covering us in warmth..but I will get there!
An Everest for any to see but exclusive to those who can.
Climbing higher in years
emotional trials
loves and fears
or passing seasons where I signify the apparent shift with
a name
(Parade)
or
(Pendulum)
Out from under
But not yet completely unwrapped from
The Mosaic
to see it all stretched open,
beautiful and tragic.

Let's see..
well,

..there's the writer who never gave a **** about anybody but himself

..and the writer who had a fetish for pouring melted candlewax onto her own toes, while being watched by her cat

..and the writer who owned a chimpanzee named Tom, one afternoon when the writer wasn't home, Tom frenzied around the house chasing down a moth, this caused obvious concern to the neighbors, who heard the commotion last for an hour or maybe more, ah well..

..and the writer who began experimenting with a dream machine, but stopped upon feeling his brain's physical presence within his own skull, weighty, and terrifyingly colorful!

..and the writer who did the same thing, except kept going and found herself bored with it after a while anyways

..and the writer who broke down out front of a Walgreens in reaction to a phone call detailing a nearby tragedy involving two cars + a logging truck (and a tad of ******* but shhhhh) grief was part of that performance, but also in knowing he may have been directly responsible for the crash (coke was given by him, to the driver)

..and the writer who experienced the best ****** of his life without even a single poke of physical contact to his ****!

..and the writer who became addicted to biting her knuckles, to the point she needed to see someone about it

..and the writer who filed for divorce after finding out that his lover had caught numerous ****** infections/diseases (and only having been told by their cousin, too! probably from two recent trips to South America unbeknownst to their partner)

..and the writer who had a hobby of taking photographs of lampshades of varying textures, ages, sizes, and which emitted sometimes very exotic colors from the bulb inside.

..and the writer who never left his city, due to a paralyzing fear of travel

..and the writer who fell in love with another writer who was in love with someone else (as is usually the case)

..and the writer who passed away yesterday
..and the writer who will pass away tomorrow

..and the writer who admired the work of Charles Bukowski and tried too hard to be like Charles Bukowski, at the peril of those around him

..and the writer who's family hasn't messaged her in a few months now, and continues to wonder why

..and the writer who's favorite song was "I'm So Happy (Tra La La)" by Lewis Lymon & The Teen Chords, though in reality she was never happy (let alone SO happy) and often played the song as a front to convince herself that everything would be just fine
"JUST AS HAPPY AS CAN BE"

..and the writer who never knew they were a writer and never wrote anything in their life but **** it if they did!

..and the writer who's favorite month was July, favorite day Saturday, and time of day at around 2pm

..and the writer who's last words were never written down or heard by anyone outside their secluded office to which he screamed "HELP!!!" and then died from heart attack

..and the writer who actually lived only three blocks away and was good friends with the guy, and found his door unlocked and the smell came first

..and the writer who found it funny to imagine getting involved in certain scenarios inappropriately contrasted with specific songs, settings, or themes. An example: funerals where everyone shows up in clown costumes, sunbathing in the Arctic, being invited to a nice dinner and the restaurant is playing loud shoegaze music, closely befriending the person you hate the most in the world just to see if you can, and bringing a large cage of parrots to see a movie with you

..and the writer who really DID some of those things mentioned above (I won't say which)

..and the writer who wrote about all these other writers (me)

..and the writer who may be reading about all these other writers (you)

((HAHA))
Aesthetic marriage of both
word as itself and
device (onomatopoeia)
BANG!
POW! *** (moonshine or death? both?)
But I'm no comic artist
or comic
or even artist (maybe..)
the word artist sounds pretentious, am I the only one??
Sometimes I think computers are writing better poems than people these days, myself included (not that I'M so special)
As you may be able to tell, I'm getting desperate to beat the Machine.

(I wrote this on a phone, just realized the irony)
If it weren't already obvious,
but sometimes I'm not sure that others know where my head is at, as I am often questioning myself
as it is.
Especially lately.. largely in part to the simultaneous distractions and inspirations from LIFE!
that which I write about is often what keeps me from writing
(catch THAT 22!)
Joseph Heller is somewhere in my old basement catching mold
..NO not the guy
the book..
thank God..
I'm not much of a God guy though,
maybe God isn't a guy
or even a god!
                                    maybe God is a good nights sleep
speaking of,
goodnight! (to dream of church organs and the way dust floats softly in view of a bright window)

Sigh..

Old Katherine Kimberly had a sty near her eye
it was a bleeding abhorrent electric
dream spilling out her sanity
the sty was not just any regular sty
it was a satyr placed there by cruel forever
just because
why not

old KATHERINE KIMBERLY had a
mute cousin who came over for tea
when K.K was feeling down, he wanted to be a comedian
but this wouldn't work out for obvious reasons.
old Katherine Kimberly
had a recurring nightmare involving the world around her inverting it's layout, a backwards realm with backwards chairs and backwards backs
everyone looking like they suffered a dramatic accident
spine snapped but still walking
she was the outcast with her even shoulders and
delicate form but there it was that sty by her eye
wouldn't quit not even with sleep.
She went to see a doctor about the nightmares he prescribed a miracle
didn't work
so she went to church
met some wiry bald-spot
evangelic addict figure who
gave her mysterious bagged-and-untagged drugs
(those didn't work either)
nothing would help.. Kimberly came to the conclusion that the sty and the dreams were correlated in some spiritual, cursed sort of way.
Nobody could see it they promised

"No! no! you look fine, everything is in order god knows what you're on about Kim"

but she scratched and scratched for hours in her bedroom and looked in the faded mirror with microscopic detail and sure enough it was/gone??
since when??
she could feel it there, she was no hypochondriac it was alive and feeding off her still
that HORRIBLE THING!
some months now or maybe more it had always weighed her down but now gone
or never there...?
IMPOSSIBLE!
this wasn't over, old Katherine Kimberly would tear this ****** apart on a sub-atomic level and make sure it would never haunt her in any respect from "this day forth!" she said poetically,
wearing a conservatively fashioned dress with green flowers on it
and green grass, too.

She took to the New York subway on a Wednesday, the time was.......2pm
and she was headed to the drycleaners but not the one closest her apartment, the people that ran that one were pushy and irritating.
She was going to "Maude's" she and Maude had lovely conversations about the Gardener who lived one floor up from her who sometimes allowed a small hello from his lips on the way up, off of work.
She liked what he liked
or at least she imagined that to be true
but then again we all do that
it's a bad habit
he could be a total *******, she thought.
Old Katherine Kimberly walked in and opened the backroom there was Maude listening to Brian Eno
(Cindy Tells me/HERE COME THE WARM JETS/1974)

"THE RICH GIRLS ARE WEEPING"

Maude heard K.K come in and swiveled around in her office chair with the one off-kilter wheel which she didn't do a very good job of fixing.
"Well I don't shop at Ikea, its no wonder why, Kat"

"This sty! I know it looks like it's gone, but it isn't, do you still have any of that herbal remedy stuff you told me about earlier?"

"yeah, yeah.. the stuff you refused take way back when?"

"I admit I was being stupid, I just need help, I'm out of options and I'm kind of on a bad trip right now, see? some ghoul at the church gave me these pretty pink pills, said they were from mars and that they could cure anything! O Maude I was desperate and now I'm hallucinating all sorts of wack. I'm afraid I won't come back from this! I dunno what to do Maude! I dunno what to do!"

"Relaxxxx poor doll, you're always getting caught up in messes like this. It's like I said! you gotta settle down with that Rupert, he seems like a genuine guy, real caring, real. I'll help you, I have that herbal medicine in my car I will be right back"

Maude left hastily with a pat on K.K's shoulders as she went
K.K was going cuckoo
she suddenly felt that on a very metaphysical level her atoms were remembering this drug
always
and that when she died, eventually..some innocent child would be reconstituted with her atoms
to live with this for all time
and to be forcefully admitted into a psychiatric ward
pleading for lobotomy!

"What is this? what did I take? does that Kubrick-looking ****** use this often? how is he even tethered to reality?" she was dizzy, good thing she was sitting down..

Maude came back, shaking her head in sympathetic disapproval
"Jeez.. you've gone down the rabbit hole as far as ailment is concerned, that's for sure"

"What do you mean..?" Katherine Kimberly kept her feet grounded to the carpet as to not sway reality to a snowglobe catastrophe.

"Well you say the sty has something to do with the nightmares, or vice-versa, so you took drugs from a complete stranger! only made things worse, I'm sure.. and now you've come to me"

"That's true" K.K agreed
"Why do this to yourself?"
"I've been lost, out of tune, completely washed.."
(((((())))(((((()(((((((((())))(())))))))))()()()))))((­(())))))))))
she was going to continue, but felt like vomiting

She lept from her seat and hunted for a bathroom,
A vicious tabla bleached her brain
with supernatural viscosity
her body played like a cosmic instrument
for a higher being in a higher realm.
Next, the frantic sitar which reminded K.K of July and
the humid balcony marijuana, Ravi Shankar melodically spinning in her living room.
This was a much different experience.. as made clear by her
convulsions
the viper's final dose of venom

"The great spirit lifted his hand without much ado, and split apart Flower Mountain's ten million layers." - from Elder Ting Stands Motionless. (Blue Cliff Record)

"-******* that ******* from the church
why I ever listened to him-
-I feel like I am afloat atop the world able to see the stars as vibrant eyes! but I'm wavering without a sense of gravity. I am at once motionless and spinning!-"

A lot more trouble than it was worth,
O the wisdom of consequence!
K.K, poor doll, lucid consciousness
and an acute awareness for her disposition in this Universe
and all alternate universes for that matter.
(Including the version of her that decided against taking those pink pills from that pink-cheeked man, Stanley Kubrick lookalike ******* probably only posing as a religious man, they never met in one reality, they ****** in another. In one he is god! he is the only god! and in one she is god! anything better than this reality now! her lungs foaming up with death)

GLOBE-O-VOOTY/
GUIDE-O/
ME SOFTLY/
GET THIS THREY-WAY/
OUT FROM MY MIND/
(That's VOUT language for you, there. Slim Gaillard's timeless bop language)

after puking up the rest of her morning meal
she wiped her mouth dry with her sleeve and
reunited w/ Maude who handed K.K that herbal
music
and wished her well

"Look, I know it's none of my bussiness.. but if I were in your shoes, I'd make some changes.. that's all I'm gonna say about THAT"

so Katherine Kimberly went home, she wept
wept about her disposition
about her mistakes
about that inoperable mental sty which was more than a sty
parasitically latched onto her for ages
she wept about how boring people were
how after all this protest and bloodshed
we're just the same as before if not less intellectual!
this fever dream of a day hath made her realize
that she SHOULD make a change.
Hell, Maude was right, sometimes insufferable (tho not as much as others)
She couldn't keep doing this, whatever this was.

The herbal medicine was contained in some cutesy vial
a kind of amber-shade
thick liquid.
Just in the fashion of Lewis Caroll she
drank up her prayer potion, with the sensation that the room was expanding around her, shrunk down to the pathetic dreamer once again,
and so she tried to sleep this desperate sickness off.

One floor up, Rupert thought about whether or not he should *******, he decided to make some coffee instead, continuing where he left off on a new-age book about hypnotism.

They were spectacular!
Visions unlike any you would believe!
and one day I may write about them.

Wounded
Sterile sidewalk
bent black wood bench
fetch DOG fetch!
the sky is clear today
trees are trying out modelling again, for the painters.
I'm at the public park where Big Satanic Paul used to live in a tent
too small for his heart
I'm drinking another free coffee.
O potential Buddhas all about the place
Loved, loved by all
loved by nobody
Solipsism in tired affections
we've all experienced a similar doorknock on the heart
who's earth settles uncomfortably after feeling like that.
I'm drinking another free day
in my F R E E country
(as we're so obliged to believe. We didn't choose to be born here, but we certainly choose to die here)
Writing on a bathroom wall says something too rude for me to copy in this poem.
I'm drinking another hour
the weather is nice today,
I never met Big Satanic Paul, but according to my friend who shared tent space with him some six years ago, he wasn't the type to get better.
Anyways, I hope he died as gently as he lived.
I'm drinking another Spring.

The annual rose garden blushes beneath a soft dress
in May. My crooked puppet's shadow has subsided in the theater it came to make way for fairweather, protest, wet teal ink
flowering the walls as sunlight shines thru and the mechanical
blinking of shadowy eyes now spurred AWAKE.
An Appalachian mind gaze and spiderweb neon
smoke attaching it's warmth to every freckled cheek,
a mint kiss like the opening of a fir tree smelted into the
foggy earth.

Ceramics embroider the shop sills
and ceiling fans wave hello n farewell to every guest
each day longer than the last!
WANDERER slept
sound in the Nagakin Capsule Tower, few nights ago now,
had an idea, lost it, feather flowed it's way across Pacific
to my bedroom and I wrote about her here, and saw a Japanese tea ceremony flash by
her eyes/my eyes
a collective consciousness
sometimes years apart.

She, who's witnessed the debris of catastrophe,
standing over what was a golden vase
filled with Tulips
now ash, forgotten except for in a memorial vague outline
in the bewitched brain(s)
Visionary! Arms twitched to the rapture occurring in plain view of us all
VIOLIN rebounding intangible yet unmistakable sound
on a train in Tokyo city. Cement is damp with Spring's sweet rain,
her feet sore from all this walking!

I appreciate her travels, as they are at once my own,
a second-hand enchantment
the taste of green tea, cherries!
EXPLOSIVE FORMLESS ANIMAL WHITE
feather grazed my skin, startled.

This feeling??
something set free, a violent hue erratic
markings on the cave walls, the one from Plato's allegory,
watching fire light the shape of our bodies and some spectacular image displays itself invisible
but felt, undeniable!
Settled, fire transferred to our lungs.
We call this “ART”
we have left the cave, to Paris, to Senegal, to Jaipur,
to her and I and you.

Animal oh animal caged no longer,
howling paintings and smells to our eyes,
bitten our hands sharp with poetry,
this ghast who's empathy for strangers has made a rare few dizzy. Possession! Willingly accepted nocturnal entity and I write this because I can't help myself.

THIS IS WHAT CREATED THE MANDALA,
COLORS OF AN ANCIENT PEACOCK
LURKING WITHIN US TENDING THE FLORA
which takes inspiration from museums, from brief embers shot up in a chasm fireplace illustrating what we'll call Forever,
vocal alchemist who resides in descending faint harp and opera
a fountain in a mysterious lobby only visited by one person, once every few months,
birds shimmer in planted palms and a crystal ceiling expounds the details of travels to come,
an orb above like an observatory for our OWN universe.

APOLLO IN LAUREL
PIANO, ASIAN INFLUENCE,
Damien Hirst's “Beautiful darkness spreading to every corner of your mind painting"
framed holy upon the walls
Jean Cocteau's “The Blood of a Poet” projected also, side by side.
A painted face, a parrot imitating Sudhana

“This is the abode of those of unobstructed intellect and broad mind,
Enjoying the realm of space, free from dependence,
Penetrating all times, free from obstruction,
Clearly perceiving all being and becoming” - Avatamsaka Sutra

I'm speechless!
She's speechless! Her Tokyo, admittedly imaginary. It's her private
Nagakin Capsule Tower. It's my private Temple, my private Cocteau,
shelves stocked with the poems I'll one day write.
Words which shall knock on my dented skull in sleep mostly, but other times I can't recall as of this moment (Get back to me in July)
retired to literary France
and caught in the quicksand of aging, perhaps medicine will be far along enough that I shall die at 173?
a stretch, but considering that sciences are pushing for immortality by 2045 (pfft)
we shall see.
(??)
Bearded and divine with love
and experience from Airplanes
free jazz, dramatics,
heart to heart, dense libraries,
evening walks to Montmartre
a hand to hold
a kiss to experience.
Meditations,
Rodriguez “Sugar Man” fades out
“Silver magic ships... you carry...”
Sung once by the European barista in British Columbia who kept me caffeinated with a double shot of espresso for guessing the song right which was playing..This just happened, but I realize it'll become such a faint memory by then.
Out and out and out and out there
Far beyond the reaches of consciousness that previously mentioned feather will gather with the other ideas and become the WHITE peacock, infinite.
Carrying us there as wintry atoms
snowdrops on it's back.
One life to another.

"just talk about love, or ***, or starving hearts, or just shut up
and I'll go

but" - Jonathan Richman

(..NIGHT)

A drunken man is blown by bathroom paintings,
with shower curtains displaying crowned sparrows
who laugh at his
crowned ****!
and humor his life!
also crowned
(but only subjectively if you were to ask anyone else)
I'm a burning insomniac surrounded by a whole cast of characters tonight, including the one with with a lazy eye who mirrors Chaplin
and arrived to the party disoriented from recent Salvia.
Then there was the one with a sleek current-edge-type haircut
who spent a few good minutes telling me about the film works of Philip Glass
            B E A U T I F U L
They play Bowie,
the whole social palette disintegrated beneath the weight of intoxication.
I, too, am dazzled from pale alcohol already (eight minutes past Midnight!)
The Dancing Athlete ambiguously dances on an absent television while my head hurts from a blue bulb glowing from a nearby lamp because it's too late for all this
and I'm reminded that I know almost nobody here.

(...AND DAY)

Maybe thirteen hours later, walking with Dante the bearded dog,
my friend wheeled a stranger, narcotic-vacuum-cheeked amputee.
He begged for light, as in a lighter, not that light of GOD, no no,
all the while he showed off his stub leg (cut off at the knee) bleeding out all over the sidewalk when his accident first occurred.

"THIS GUY THREW ME FROM THE BALCONY!" he preached

Past the cathedral narcissus
"JESUS COME/
JESUS SAVE MAN/
JESUS MAKE FIRE/
JESUS WAS A HOLY INDIA"
Across the street, village of enduring tombs and firesmoke,
shadowed tent outlines
breathed-in
playing cards and tricks
mandolin reverberations among tents and tents of
sickly or addict, all listening in on the live performance, a blessed Alice with dreads, lively chords emitted from her skull of ideas.

The forgotten noose of man ****** in a parking lot
by a liquor store, while we pick up some wine, which is, and I quote here "DRY AND CHEAP"
A sunny quiet perched on the field
of gleaming downtown streetlights
thru thinning clouds.
Olympic mountains in view, the kind of mountains only seen in magazine articles to be experienced by those unafraid to die.
All these sad people out here, too!
Their faces expand beneath capital industry,
Elephants occupied with jackets sewn in an anonymous factory.
Quick tip, I wanna write it down before I forget: don't listen to that old music when you're feeling lonely, it's all about love and especially in tragedy this is a bad idea.

I'm sick and wept and my teeth have been growing cameras,
the youth are dressed in drag, carpet cleaners bob their heads to unheard tunes but you can see the sound thru a glass window.

This city, oh, this city..
with bodies sprinting hard by each other and who bike across train tracks associated with very vague childhood memories.
We all float on hands electrified by the night!

Jonathan Richman tonite, who's vocal deliveries have been honest
and romantic, in a passionate sort of way.
He's singing that live track "A Plea For Tenderness"
(I know you were waiting for me to get to this)
and past few days have been strange
and past few weeks stranger, still. Not as bad as a lot of people but man, strange..
that night, and day.
Walking by the Victoria Hospice care center and looking down on my wrists which'll soon be tattooed with loving hands yet oh
so
aggressively pained by abuse because of a terminal disease and attempted suicide (NOT my own life, to clarify)
and it got me thinking on how we're all mutually getting thru this place and every face has seen hearts and seen death almost equal.
It can get to be too much, that's why melancholy has been defined to begin with. But ******* Jonathan Richman had to make this song.

"if I'm better than the wall
(tell me now)"

"Because it's dark at night
and I'm alone at night
I'm so sad and I'm so scared"

Things I've said in my own head and felt in my own time
as has everyone else. I don't mean to specify that this has happened RECENTLY, but it's definitely happened before. These times.

"now, I've just read some writers
from the old days
because I knew, I knew that they'd understand"

but BUT everybody is accidental!
even Rimbaud has stubbed his toe and I know that it'll be fine
it'll be fine
it'll be fine
in Vietnam maybe
and it'll be finer in Varanasi
(maybe-r)
but for now I don't know
I can say it I can try and feel it and understand it and pretend I know it
I gotta get away from people to be replaced by a Hindu I've never seen before
and sleep on a mattress that (like a new pair of shoes) hasn't grown in to my spinal chord and hurts ****** bad at first and is unfamiliar and the weather is warmer than usual
and the horns of traffic will be frightening but that too, will dissipate with time.
I gotta save up my money and hug my wallet like a starved cat
Jonathan ******* Richman's "A Plea For Tenderness"
what a fitting title
for a time like this one now.

Today marks the birth of Spring!
             Sun Ra says so,
Halycon Jazz and
            desire blooming from a blossom's womb.
Glass tower apartments line the waterfront ignited by the
            sun's shy arrival.
Birds have become more public in their idling and a
            schizophrenic joy has flowered in people's heads.
Shining
showered
tended root
           the horn's bellow in all directions,
windshield wipers shall have their hibernation
          while this garden city constructs
a new tune!
AND A SMALL BELT OF LIQUID LAMPSHADE IN THE SKY!
                                                         SOLVENT!
                            HEARTBEAT!
         Weather's cleared up, AT LAST!
The candy-shaped hookers of Rock Bay can draw their laugh-on-lips
        and straighten themselves
to Patience and Prudence's “A Smile and A Ribbon”
A man outside a gas station one block down the street from my house
        can get his cigarettes and quell his KICK
to the sound of clouds evaporating.
Today marks the birth of Spring!
        Snow's wet corpse made into a child of yesterday
I'm in my 20th ******* year, I'll grow more inspired as it hits April
  
  KAMIKAZE PAINT
                                          RABID POET
                                                            ­      PAVEMENT TRANSPARENT
              All of it is H A P P E N I N G
                              this FORWARD CONDITION!

I'll lay in bed reading my books on reincarnation and
“Meditation: A Practical Study” (Adelaide Gardner)
while I finish the last of the Winter's wine.

I

Flowers already,
sputtering bicycles and the mad drums of foreshadowed
Springtime,
Massage therapist of the universe!
The extracted final note in a bird's outcry and my ears are full of sound
and sleep.
A cities undeterred heartbeat welcomes me to the continuous span of events only separated by the lambent verve,
windowless eyes watching each other
a signal-light blue ocean winding around a wicked mattress
seductively spinning a cowl into the night for her lover
(who's thoughts have been paused!  he's 100% clocked in and spun out, a hanging aluminum)
DAZZLING!
toothpaste spit outside into January's soft grass from a second story dorm room that's curtains reminds me of The Glenshiel..
(or maybe I'm suddenly feeling sublime death slowly knotting itself into my lungs, always been there but kinda like noticing your nose resting on your face for the first time)
On the bus home I thought of new years eve, 2015.
After the countdown, emerged from the underground
James Joyce pool hall,
rushing out to the streets
an asphalt madhouse
lunacy, absolute, and stabbings nearby tortured parkades.
Here's the new year made real,
a tangible calendar
an authoritative sentiment
while I listened to Donovan's "To Sing for You"
My new friends laughed, arms together,
I felt like I was standing on the edge of an undiscovered sun,
replaced by Vietnamese clouds
(Which I'll sail by come September)

II**

A crow waits on a balcony, wet and lonely from the rain.
Radios buzzing an electric tuba.
Smoke is the father and
dew is the mother
I am the son cold and clothed, while others soak beneath
canopies, cement gaps, they pray, I pray for them although I
wouldn't consider myself religious,
"Agnostic spiritualism"
yeah, the has a nice flow to it
but that's just my opinion..
Waking up before the sun has breathed
the first western factory.
Yellow hats
****** fists
a faint star is singing
I'm listening
ears are ringing
a static drone collapses
consciousness reaches a peak before subsiding to sunlight
(sequel to the last day, prequel to the days to come)
I'll fall in love again, I know it
I have it marked on my calendar you'll see!
Water a few hours still/room temperature/is shaking because my foot
beats against the carpet/
this music isn't exactly conventional or pure as the morning
more a glass shatter
or a psychotic scream in distant queer Victoria nightclubs.
Passing Christmas,
Oak Bay,
Spanish holiday (potentially)
and ** Chi Minh City market walks
(future events ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A university lecture from Vandana Shiva,
watching my dad's cat for four months
(Where my room was destroyed in a forty-five minute
terrified chase thru the house to lock him in a carrier for an urgent vet appointment due to kidney stones, or what we thought was urinary crystals at the time. He howled the entire car ride there)
I think back to childhood, 1996 Apartment light and the December blizzard which buried parking lots, blocked entrances/exits n forced people to be patient for once, sit and talk, make love without setting an alarm for the morning after
(before I was even 5, or 10, long before I wrote poems, and lost those I would come to care about..)
Hopefully all those elementary school friends turned out okay.
Since moving, I've frequently passed great corner store curtains,
green and grey dusty
by the rusting tills
an empty town
where the soccer fields became overgrown and ice cubes melt slow on
people's fingers (As they wait for time to roll by like it always has)
a forgivable loss of community.
Even so, there's that consistent disappointment in lost years,
a waiting room, and I'm choking on oriental carpet threads lodged one by one into my throat and here I thought I'd eventually taste the Chinese
but it appears that they have instead swallowed me, downed me with tequila (label torn from passing months and birthdays not celebrated)
The holy temperate wind expands down and through bare branches,
argumentative hours
desperate hands
a loudspeaker CALLING!
and the WILD MACHINE cuckoo cuckoo past the insulation.
Silvery sweet, undreamed kisses, misunderstandings,
the cool reflection of a kettle while two wait for midnight and for the butterfly to creep up on their shoulders.
(cradled by cosmic lobotomy, hours where not one person can sleep,
and Sadhus give spiritual advice for those that need it, India, while I need their voices here on Vancouver Island, far from the Ghats)
When can I go for that intercontinental voyage??
to escape the warehouse cathedrals,
capital Christs,
nettled lipstick,
weariness in the age of wireless consciousness
and a spectrum of commonplace goddesses who wake with no lucidity.
My breathing getting heavier every day, with the weight of wanderlust,
an asthma designed for those who's material position is dictated by a secluded room
(slowly catching fire)
I'm only months away from the prophesied airplane..
all been leading to this
here, now
soon.

The only known alleviation
on this unrest for experience
resides in poetry.

Round candle circle
light bounding wall to wall
dark vinyl corners and alcohol spews
from the dry lips of young people talking about how
the power has gone out.
There's Bossa Nova and a floral couch and conversation
decorating the room
cars hurdle on in the black, ferocious nighttime and I'm cold.
A GREAT PINK BIRD
Plastic and commited to a vow of silence hangs from the ceiling curved
like a beautiful woman, some of us are in bathrobes, a stretching tentacle hits the brain an incense smell
bubbles foaming in the core
a wicked liquid!
names are being called!
drunks DRUNKS DRUNKS
Drums DRUMS DRUMS
Literary minds taking puffs from the mechanical grapevine
center of this room now foaming
and a flute rises in sound
!L O U D E R!
The painted fruits have arrived!
Including the drag queen and the one who slept soundly in Saint Malo
(who currently reads from a flaming newspaper)
Smellings salts sharpen people's noses, an instantaneous rush and
nauseating sensations, SNAP OF ENERGY/
Which has disgusted Imogen and been repeated by everyone else
curiously.
The lights came back on hours ago.

India is on the mind,
talks of Varanasi now that it's previous inhabitants have moved to Spain, another step in their vulnerable but accepted state of mind
and journeying to find a definition of self
(Which I am going thru now)
The girl who held a flower sweetly bloomed in Alaska,
The girl who dances alone in an isolated cabin up island who still occasionally drives to the dentists office 45 minutes away in a small town I used to call home,
The martial-arts teacher/meditational healer who recited W.C Williams with me on the bus in July's romantic ash.

Where is
it?
Where is
what?
I and you and we
What to do
Where to do it
What times might it call upon us
It (this)
The current and present interval of morning
hours where my face aches from (trying) to sleep funny.
No, really? where's it at?!
Birds rise from a wintry treeline, a stranger waits at the bus stop,
I'm freezing out here the next morning and predict much the same
till at least March of next year.
Bones are blooming around me, youth to swell and
love to feel
we're peeling petals
and shedding subjective gold all over the linoleum
but don't ask me who made it I can't tell ya nobody can, later on as a windswept forest road covered in loose pine needles and fir branches
hits the eyes
I walk home and listen to a man imagining his own private orchard.
I'm reminded just then that Albert Camus once said that everyone has (at one point) experienced or will experience the realization that everything (all of it)) is simply absurd, and always has been. We either choose to accept the world, and recover from an overwhelming Nihilism, or decide that it's not worth continuing our lives.
But after a sight like this I'm also reminded that
sometimes even you or I could be beautiful.

Dark spotted room luminous
stage flare and fire
from the bandstand
reverberating energies
I hold a shipwrecked bottle in my hand
people are screaming
to the transient
and the metaphor
and the silent sky
I hold wicked form in my other hand
KURT     VONNEGUT    PLAYS
(Not a piano)
The room is faster
and chuckling heavy set back row phone call
girl scratches her lottery ticket
It's freezing out
I got a job at a movie theater, new time starts NOW
and we're all trying to make something out of tonight
Sylvia is shaking through the ferocious storm
that Sylvia, the same colors as an
inspired tattoo belonging to a year
everyone's on about
including ** Chi Minh City
and all it's superhighway narrowness n sunshine
What a hell of a year this one has been

(Blackout---Springboard--Parade--Pendulum--Butterfly--???)
­
SO LONG!
SEE YOU LATER!
THERE'S AN EASTERN SONG
I MUST PLAY FOR THE CHILDREN OF VIETNAM!
IN A LANGUAGE THEY DON'T YET UNDERSTAND!

After the show is done
I emerge and the modern rebel
puts on his jacket where written on his back with hard tape reads

“WAR IS OVER”

the hysterics go back to their usual voiceless catatonia
and I wonder at that moment
how we can feel so alone
with so many of us here.

You're alone again...
another daylight epiphany, detached, taxed, viewing traffic through the misty window
as the sun inflates and coffee warms
your gentle bones.
I'm in a rainbow hotel with a black cat, singing truisms
down the hallway when nobody is around
(and I can slam the doors OPEN AND CLOSED)
just to make it seem like there's more going on in here than there actually is.
Some would call that insanity, I don't know what I would call it.
You're a stranger again, slowly aligned by one's entire life to a
parking lot blacktop,
faces passing like curtains, and you're blue
I'm blue too.
I require an anthem to get myself up at sunrise,
I require a great staircase limelight triumph signaling the (future) snow-capped mountains
to watch my great decay.
Oh it continues and will never cease...
my matter recollecting into life and then death again.

The whole world is lonely,
ceasing it's communal conversation to heal by
fire flower bloomed
and the whistle of
a kettle hymnal
you're alive and for now everything is all right.
I understand..
I don't understand
.....
you can't expect me to know any better as someone
who's endured the last four years in a storage unit
fenced by archaic wigs
and cockroaches who throw model parties
in the overcast shadow I can't illuminate
as it is all darkness there.
I could listen to cars travel by the locked door
and I could see the faint glow of a headlight when the sun goes down but I lacked the strength to pull that door open or to leave.
The only thing allowing me to escape was companionship,
“Will your own reality”
there's some situations in life that are simply inevitable
such as love
and lacklove
the searing pain in one's gut when they recognize another night in solitary confinement (a punishment of circumstance)
Or an internal circus in witness of the amaranth figure standing by my doorway and it's incandescent approach
and you (I) don't even have to plead.
That black cat likes to hide up in the lobby chandelier purring thoughts
......
To itself?
or to nobody
to the cat it doesn't seem to matter.
I named it Franz
(guess why)

In public, I have found there's always qualities you can appreciate in someone's smile,
they have a way of seeming so distant and yet all part of the same face,
crying without shedding a tear,
whispering for help without saying a word,
ready and willing to try with one another.
But instead it's the songs on a bus or silence.
I decide which
and so do the other passengers.
(subjectivity)
Your voices are beautiful I wish
you could really understand that,
when I wade by in a night
enclosed to a single room
in a single house
on an island in
it's own wet corner of the world,
only music.



Out
                          there                    ­      making
what I CAN of living
            with
                                  myself
­      and
s o m e t i m e s
(if I'm so lucky)

Others

sweetly           spinning
          
      coinless
                   and
              covered in heartbreak
on
   the
       way
             to
                a
                  shrine
                   ­        to
                              be
                             ­     kissed
                                            by
      ­                                          possibility.

HURDLING THROUGH THE TRAFFIC NIGHTLIGHT MACROCOSM MY BUS BOPS AND DASHES LANE AND INTERSECTION
BAM GOES THE TENNIS SHOP
THE GRILL
THE SHOPPING CENTER
IT'S ALL LIGHT IT'S ALL ECSTASY
A BOILING CANDLE
RAPAPAPA-
THE WILD JAZZ
BUDDY RICH SWEATING IN MY EARS
UNRESTRAINED FRENZY
NEON BLINKING APARTMENTS WIDE IN THE DARK DISTANT ATMOSPHERE
MOHAWK MAN BOOT COLLISION ON THE COLD FLOOR
SOME LINOLEUM SOMEBODY SHUTS OFF THE LIGHTS TO HIS STALE OFFICE RETURNING TO BED DRAGGED OUT AND BEAT
BEGGING FOR SLEEP IN AN UNWASHED BED
BUZZ AND THRAP THE DRUMS AND CYMBALS SOAK ANY OTHER SOUND INTO THE
949 HYSTERICAL NIGHT
GAS STATIONS
NIGHTCLUBS
MONOLITH
CAR DEALERSHIPS
MOTELS
RADIO TOWERS
BUS DEPOTS
LIQUOR STORES
SUBWAY
UPTOWN
4 6 4 5 0
APT SUITES
DRAIN SERVICES
"STOP REQUESTED"
DISTORTED RATTLE OF THE INNER WIRING AND WHEELS SQUEAL TO A HALT IN FRONT OF EMPTY HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION
"FOR YOUR SAFETY PLEASE HOLD ON"
UNSPOKEN MONOLOGUE OF WOES IN EACH TIRED SKULL
CASINO
LIBRARY
DRIVE THRU
PHARMACY
VAPOR SHOP
INFLAMED EGO
RAPTURE
MORNING RAZOR WELCOME
POLICE TASER UNWELCOME
I'M PROUDLY RANTING
OF MY SURROUNDINGS
OF THIS MAYHEM MUSIC
THIS GASOLINE VESSEL
HOWLING INTO NOVEMBER
TRANSFIXED AT THE ENTIRETY OF IT ALL
OF THIS
OF THAT
OF THOSE
THE STEADY RACKETING IN MY  BRAIN CONVULSES TRAIN OF THOUGHT PURE FLAMMABLE VERSE
ELECTRIC
"GRANITE & QUARTZ"
THEATRE
THERE IS NO THEATRE
NOT HERE
DON'T BOTHER STAGING SOMETHING AS ELABORATE AS CHAOS ONLY THE WIND BIG BAND CAN BUZZ OUT A TUNE LIKE THE AFTER-HOUR MARCH OF LOOSE HEADS
POLITICAL AFTERMATH ON THE TELEVISION
DRUNKEN SUPERSTITIONS
SIDEWALK FIGHTS
RECKLESS CONSUMPTION
RAMPANT DISORDER
CLASS WEALTH IMBALANCE
CRUELTY
ABANDON
INSOMNIA
PARANOIA
THE SKY HAS SEEN EVERY WAR AND MISHAP OF US
IT SECOND HAND SMOKES EVERY
INDIA PYRE
SMOKESTACK REPETITION
MORNING COMMUTE
AFTERNOON JOYRIDE
FIREWORK
AIRPORT BACCHANAL
THE CLOUDS DO RECALL
DISTANT OLD-WORLD CASUALTIES AND THE NUCLEAR INVENTION
A LOSS OF IDENTITY
I THINK OF ALL THIS
AND THE BUS WINDS DOWN
SCREECH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M ALMOST HOME
I'M ALMOST THERE
THE HOME THAT'S NOT MY OWN
NOT YET
IT'S EVERYPLACE
AND NOWHERE AT ALL
IT'S THE UNSEEN AND THEN SEEN
INDIVISIBLE AND TRANSPARENT REALITY
IT'S EVERY DRIVE
AND DREAM
I'M ALMOST THERE NOW I CAN TASTE ANOTHER
CATACLYSM
WHILE MIRACULOUS JAZZSOUNDS AND
TCHAIKOVSKY'S CANNONS
SILHOUETTE A CHANGE
OF PACE
IN THIS MAD PLANET
AND ALL IT'S
HABITUAL
INHABITANTS
FOR BETTER OR WORSE
I WILL CONTINUE MY MEDITATIONS
AND GET BY
TO CATCH THE BUS AGAIN
AND TO SEE INDONESIA AGAIN
AND TO LOVE AGAIN
AND TO DRINK WHISKEY BY A MERCURY BONFIRE IN SOME PASSING YEAR
AND HOLD TO HOPE AGAIN
AND HOLD
AND WRITE MORE POEMS
AND WRITE MORE POEMS IN VIETNAM
AND MORE POEMS IN BENARES
AND MORE POEMS IN SAN FRANCISCO
AND MORE POEMS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
UNTIL A BEARD KISSES MY HARDSHIPS
AND REMINDING ME I'LL ALWAYS GET PAST WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE WORST OF IT
I'LL WRITE AND WEEP AND SING
AND RACE MY OWN DEATH INEVITABLE
IT WILL BE
*E  X  P  L O  S  I  V  E
X                               V
P                                I
L                           ­     S
O                               O
S                                 L
I                                  P
V                         ­       X
E  X  P  L  O  S  I  V E

DYNAMO

consciousness tossed
around in the heavenly night,
illuminations and poems in us all
as an asphalt drum bounds
oak to flat
dispersing lamentations to
the brain and barbwire ribcage
clawing at our lungs

PHANTASM

pain,
the behemoth cause for all inspiration
the pressing crucifixion
the shrill cry of harmonica overcast in
this bizarre moonlight
sinking an oceanic shadow
for my memory is high off melancholy
but i keep at it because the morning is beautiful

A PRAYER FOR WARMTH

(in my opinion)
nothing feels stranger than
an empty bedroom
we are each others loneliness

SOLIPSISM

I'm sure an abstract painter adores
the confusion of their
lovers.
Glass reflections on materials in a bedroom
E M P H A S I Z E
the EGOIST in every
sofa
and
actress
in a television set while it rains out
(creating pockets of water on the balcony)
Where is my foundation for times like these when
feet become LOUD ER in the daytime
and obstacles have grown their teeth?

Perhaps a dump truck full of nicely dressed mannequins
will finally be
ticketed
and my eyes
will see
as soft
as your
hair.

Quarry of bones in an office space
and the FORMAL TIE HAS DESTROYED ITSELF WITH
SOCIETAL EXPECTATIONS AGAIN
(LUCIDITY KEEPS INSANITY DISTRACTED)

Caffeinated Canadian Bohemian
daydream of firs showering adjacent
Manhattan batteries.
Tomorrow's rejections watch
bright and beautiful waves smile with false
inspiration
a n d a n o t h e r
concrete victim is created.

!MADNESS!
(the solar flare of the Neutral)
the ammunition in my coffee
and conversations blinking
LAUGHS          OUT
                           TO
                           THE
                           ABYSS
(gorgeous and hollow lineups in front of
a Vancouver bar 11:30pm)

Pale October energies and the
Dharma Radio
feathering my fantasies as this year reaches it's last quarter
CREATIVITY MEANDERING
NEAR NOTHING
anxiously I roll around on the mattress,
open window, listening in on the intricately staged
oblivion of trees
who've become infatuated
with coffins.

Gastown (as it appeared in my dreams)
has found it's dusk anthem!
Adriano Celantano's
"BUONA SERA SIGNORINA"
what a strange dream that was
the music was vivid to the point of
impossible recognition
and I'm awake and dizzy not from all that
but from love
(it's tilting my axis!)
Always has......

An untraceable eye
lingers in
malevolence to ALL city banks
where the late bop players
stand united and "free"
(Outside, by art on a wall with animals dancing in a hot air balloon, jealous of their own permanent state of painted euphoria)
Restaurants are consumed by silence
upon closing down,
but NOT the Fisgard streetcorner cafe
I frequent!
It's LOUD TRUTH and San Francisco weeps in
the decorated walls.....some far off dream of North Beach
Trieste evening with people who were once ALIVE!!
People that bleached
THE AMERICAN VISION
with sharpened language sleeker than
the polished jaw of Apollo.

Here I am again,
accepting the same sweeping misery
as those before me
(settled tombstones barely seen beneath a wild oak
while cars cry exhaust to beach-view apartments
and Winter's harsh wind drums against the window pane)
sure they were good people, but living plays no favorites.

I'm awake and dizzy!
forlorn with the morning.
Stars surrender to a sun
which often wonders
how we adapt to this asylum.
(Vanity makes me sleepy)

Warm in the delicate crimson light,
I lie in a temporary peace.
I am setting
as all else rises.

Flowers grow tired in the morning,
as people disrupt their sleep with car horns
blaring the industrial alarm clock to mountains and
whispering gods who smooth the leaves with their voices.

The architecture students have created a rat maze lecture hall
for students to stress in when fog rolls through the campus.

Now is the time for sentiments, anyone who has told you different
is too dull to carry any or too cold to care.
People pray for commodity.

Why have the Dutch left Asia? (less than 24 hours)
The absurdity of things is a white white sun worshiping itself
indefinitely.
Poems are autobiographies as autobiographies are poems.

Philosophers do not accommodate false prophets.
Philistines stray from therapy in paintings.
The depressed don't wake to traffic jazz but rather the silence of sleeping birds.
The sociopath will not make love without a motive.
Pacifists will not even battle their own sadness.

Autumn arrives with a few wraps on the door of an old folks home
(again)
Priests have daydreams and then suffer from a terrible insomnia.
A cigarette can last as long as the lungs that feed them.

Hospitals contain their own life cycle, I was born in 1996 and a few floors below my infancy
corpses lay in the cool sterility of a morgue.
People I would never met
(Except for 19 years later as I pass them in my local cemetery)

Projectors contain all the information needed for countless hives of youth to swarm around another thing to bury under the weight of narcissistic culture,
who's reliance on materialism is a growing fruit gone rotten.

The diverse architecture of Tokyo is really quite fascinating
(a city I would pay to get lost in)
Taiwan has existed as a single airport that reeks of tiger perfume
and sells cheap coffee in February.
(our reality is our perception of it)
Vancouver's train system is a rattling electric crib.

.......People count sheep, sheep count factories (?)

Psychic tea readers have fallen to the poor habit of leaving one's china out in the open for anyone to stumble across and become the next doomsday microphone.

Here comes the martyr on a carved wagon of moonlight.
Observing the bathroom flamingo called youth
perching upon a grenade.

A ruby suitcase emits egotism to a wicked one
who rests upon it like a vault of accomplishment.
Small snowdrops freckle a crows beak in December.
Autumn calls for keepsakes like a doll's dress
(A repressed memory)
Gifted to you by the Serendipitous Psychologist
who holds a Venetian mask to Her eye

(The forest retaining it's Summer form behind bare branched truth)

Jesus Christ is a child spotting the
street corner behind you
on the public transit.
He can create gold out of anything!
Including a shy abuse feeding off the heart of those we pass by.

Nothing is really estranged except for our perceptions.

A Monk inflates a BLACK BALLOON to float around
in an apartment with aged paint and
THIRTY TALL MIRRORS circling each side of the DOORFRAME.
Nobody knows why,
but he does this every day at 6 even when he's feeling
under the weather.

Laundromats are the most romantic place to meet somebody who shares the same infliction as you.

The drunk on the corner of Government St was here yesterday
and has vanished
(Their place to be is a match-strike away in any direction they hear it first)

I like to imagine the woman who lives across the hall from me has named her favorite potted plant or painting or
associated an object with a positive memory
(Perhaps a time she was in love)

The M O O N appeared the hue of harvest
yesterday, and I'm still burning.

Hummingbirds give advice to those who are open to listen.

Allen Ginsberg ate at my favorite restaurant,
one day I'll be placed where he sat,
writing poems and continuing a
legacy of sorts.
For those who are crazy enough to write their monsters down
so anyone can see.

Nothing but a straw man is itching the flesh of every false King and Politician.
I need a pungent flower to make them sneeze out the ******* of this
Nation
(We have amputated enough as is)

Another rural goddess steps off the bus and
some nights after an encounter like that
I watch the circus, wrapped in blankets,
laughing at the hypnotists until they laugh at me.
Arriving back home bewildered and confused.

Don't listen to ME, I haven't slept in WEEKS!
I suppose in some ways that makes me happier and more miserable
than you all.

Why can't people dream as vividly as dogs?

There's a degeneration of Society
occurring in front of the yacht clubs
here West Island
commute home again (again)
Straight men crave the
wedding dress seduction mechanism (Lingerie will do as well)
Funny we buy these expensive clothes just to take them off
on the nights we're not loveless.
Expense is all commodity anyways...
Charity bins full of grief in a loading truck for those who've been
consistently smiling.

I step off the 4 and into the immediate glorified adult night entity.
Sinister middle-aged animals scatter beneath a common moonlight
and to tenements, motels, upward skinny crackwood staircases
to some unknown neon-advertised Leviathan of
skin and sorrow.
ELECTRICITY burns in those bones.
The bones of the Brittle
The Bottled
The Erratic
The Bearded
and Retreated.

I'm here hands tight on a suitcase of whatever you'd like for ANYONE
who will do some good instead of
lightning another fire!
So many now keep to debt on a clothes hanger or
a bedside cabinet.
We're experiencing a surplus of it!
Deficit Surplus,
what a cruel contrary contagion
(Where's the pesticide for THAT insect??)

Don't take this all as universal truth,
rather, it's my own universal truth...

The best way to keep an enemy close is by continuing to think about them.
I'm rambling on and on
and living in a pendulum
of old things and new.
Goodnight.

The prettiest butterflies
                                          tend to be those who wash their
                                          c o l o r f u l    wings to   p a p e r
(ANGELS  PAINTING  TRAIN  CARTS)

I
find
everything
every
day
to
be
so
tired, tired, tired.
                              Children are decaying faster than those who raised
                                                                                                             them.

Love
        in
            a
              dark
                      room
                                set to
                                         ambiance and
                                                                  laughing
is an overture to some future fascist

(Or a whole generation of fascists)

I follow poppy flowers down avenues gray and pestilent.
I pass the radiant windows of Avalon while crows perch the ticket stands.
Sidewalk lifeless as frowning clowns droop on their way to another wake.
Fluorescent signs hang from concord wires.
I tire of the tired,
I drain from the drained.
I am the modern death.

School children are made from the same cosmic juice blend as me.
They are the modern death.
Politicians wear my infamous black garb.
The modern death is them, just as well.
Senegal actresses patter on their patchwork paste texture makeup and rose circles, hiding tears illuminated with the truth of tragedy.
There is no doubt they are the modern death.
Faerie potpourri in desolate East Hastings and clairvoyant row enticed by false visions of hallucinated men crouched beneath rotten cement canopies while locusts click and clatter midst their sorrow.
They are buzzing incantations of the modern death.
Tibet is falling hold to corruption while the boyish monks calm in their meditations, are interrupted by agony wept Bhikkus bent in ****** transgressions, even Buddha is the modern death!
China is a communist factory housing too many chimneys clogged with silent sufferings.
Communities hiding in thin dust masks bearing the insignia of the modern death, only seen underneath ultraviolet light.
My role has been diminished in recent generations, I'm growing old and flogged with decay,
same as you, modern death.

We're here for a final round of drinks
cool on our chasm lungs breathing big bang radiation for many years
while the batteries in our clocks begin to fail us and the Hospital calls occur in succession once we get too sick to see the harsh planet we'll all have the privilege of dying in.
I'm the modern death watching pale static reruns of the nature channel in a finely decorated room in some death camp retirement home
waiting on the last day, inevitable.
There's no place here for the modern death,
not anymore.

This is what the poets were talking about!
all the bodies are already skeletons.

On a throne of spraypaint driftwood
                   I watch the sailboats glide,
A painted aluminum ocean
                                               With Sunsnow reflections dashing
                                                         ­                      across the waves.
Lovers in their old age cause friction
                                         in the pebbles
                                       as they walk,
unlike many things, I refuse to believe
                                                         ­                       romance is dying.
People like them help solidify my hopes.
Gulls                           approach the tide wavering in the wind.
                              Another September has come.
                            What should come with it?

Old friends have found their place
in Vancouver.
                                                      ­          Some shall return here,
In attempt to                                                 escape desperate situations.
                      (The recurring waves are calming)
               Smoke and vapor
                     cloak the mountains softly still.
I'm unsure of where things are going,
what a change of pace!

Nine months
                     since that night in a hillside cabin
                                         where dreams foretold
wound up in chaos.
                  (More to change is on it's way)
                                              But for now, I'm content with seeing the cities
                    continue g r o w i n g.


.........The seasons sway with the breeze.

Day debt
night wept
sleep crept
Attachment.
                       Where is my attachment?
                                evening out of balance
                                        The line of my life has broken
                                                  off into separate identities
Flower feather
Hollow weather
Moonlight Canyon
                                      Skylight childhood nostalgia
                                      Stolen star
Battered cheekbones
Of weary workers keeping to
The hornet's nest
                      Reality a constant terror
                     Of city structures                         swallowing
                                                      ­                             them whole.
Blackbird rests
on an Autumn branch of
hidden meadow
checking its wristwatch obsessively for the
             Hydrogen Volcano
                INEVITABLE.
                                         Termite Corporations
                                          Cavernous Hilltops
                                        All that green is gold
(A straw man in Byzantine robes approaches
            the frosty Manhattan
    to become a relic in it's Libraries)
                         People fall in Love with coincidence,
                 (The illusion of order beyond our field or reach)
        All that love is kept in a
                    Conservatory somewhere...
                          Glossy stems connected to palpitating blossoms.

Our tired eyes are focused to the asphalt confluence
whether fever or handhold.

               Hymns ring throughout the forests of
                                                   Vancouver Island
               Dreamers hang from the Niagara Trestle caught in                
                                                   overwhelming sunlight
                                                        ­ Doused in spirit.

Holy Melancholic September
Sweeps away the dusty Summer,
                                                        e­verything seems renewed
                                                        I­n the rain..