What you seek is seeking you. --Rumi
chrome sea prelude to a prelude
The moon gets smaller as the night comes on.
Rises over bay and constructs.
Time pink
green, brief
as affection.
The city has lifted its flamingo wing
like a great pink iridescent star
shaking algae and elements
over these semimodern buildings.
The sun forces gold from shadows and windows.
So by a traffic minute
static speaks of rain, machines
cancer and harp seals
trucks guns and holy words
slipping into darkness
leaching all the beauty
from a slowing day.
The moment given is nothing new
but novelty. I had my way.
Discovered roads, went wild.
I remember everything.
I immediately forget.
Because I am a child.
gross beach and the prelude
If you're seeking enlightenment
this journey ends in the middle.
As in every human action
Desire’s set its talons deep:
I constantly create-more-creations.
See more than necessary!
Feel more than prescribed!
Broken laptop with lucite earrings and eucalyptus leaves.
Pineapple and lemon
in the velvet shade.
Untitled shipwreck.
Silk patterns, bright colors.
Who's loving my baby now?
How am I not
more lost than before?
A yellow light advising caution
gleams against the last lavender.
The heart beats like a million trains
and darkness comes down
in a dagger too eager
to rain and thrill me.
My mind is over
in the sense of seeking.
life cycles of the terrarium
O to live in a diva's day.
To have one's stimulants used against thee.
It is difficult to find a conversation
that does not lead to love-poisoning-love.
Difficult to find something
that isn't boring
or disgusting.
Everything we-don't-know-why
brings night on its back
and on the carcass of the moment past
new thoughts form
like fungi dividing the living and dead.
These are not the sexy epiphanies of brilliant youth
but steady streams of task and stat
face and judgment
date and time. Metaphysical dust.
The stuff that poets keep clean.
Everything has failed to solve thee
yet hope remains, in leaves of weeds.
The night is lighter later
by a moment
by the solstice.
O limited men in limitless oblivion.
The closest we get to understanding
can only be confusion.
◆◆◆
There are insects that live just 24 hours
more, probably, that live for less.
In this we see ourselves as grains of time—
a second-by-second guess.
It is impossible to do anything but stare.
To move on automatic
with some vague notion
of what to seek and where.
Food. Affection. Money. Prestige. Check.
Eternity is eternity
to perfect deformity
and curl in places
the soft parts stick. Sixteen.
Twenty-five.
Thirty-three and thirty-four.
Sad at looking back
at being a starving carnivore
beyond solution, deep in self-pity.
The earth around appeared to crack.
If you pieced the puzzle
you'd find a war crime
ripped from the headlines
bleeding onto the icecaps
while someone gave an explanation why.
Desperate for shelter
seeking connections, saying
even the homeless find them
one warm night
under the punishing stars
we unlock a moment to wonder
Am I the only one?
And Love, it says
Yes, Love, or
I like the way things are.
condor and snake
X is subject to rapid total change.
Moods will vary.
Events will alter.
Beauty calcifies.
It seems impossible
with these gadgets anthems and pills.
Keeping us moving
through mayhem response and the critics
on the most pristine oil spills.
Surrounded by needles and cameras
injustice frustration and death
everything’s more evil
and the greater the evil
the more it speaks
of harmony and love.
Whoever spoke I trusted less.
Whoever was silent
wasn't far behind the farce.
At night I stared at couples
kissing in the bars
and wondered about my future food source.
the coming wars
Strip-searched to the skeleton
there were gunshots in the blue.
The things we hear, the things we say
mean little on the day-to-day.
Talking freedom like a neocon
just dusts value on broken bridges, systems,
icons courts and cities.
The list is endless really.
Today a woman was shot for no reason
by a kid with no name.
It’s like we've been created
by a secret committee
inbred as a pharaoh's afterlife
and any passing luxury sedan
may determine how tomorrow ends.
May understand the tropes repeated
knowing why the bombs drop for real--- h
ow to dissemble the asylum.
◆◆◆
I adapted to a challenging environment.
Survived and hated it.
Stopped believing newspapers talk-show hosts antiheroes
the all-powerful dollar
villains supervisors
the script of heaven above
got so high I spit on stars
then felt bad because I knew
they were set like me.
To die. Avoiding death.
Saying Eternal life is awful
and waiting to believe it.
To believe in nothing, even disbelief.
Drifting here and there
repeating words I'd overheard
a puppet of prophets or their silent unmoored companion.
What are we floating for really?
To doubt the lessons of poets we admire?
And the music that we hear.
Is it really genius? Or a crude commercial
for an ancient king?
Transmissions
Metaphor clarification innuendo and slur.
Days move in harmony
with radio stations broadcasting bland hits
and arctic prophets coming true.
The logic denied
preserves its loveliness.
Rain oils on the city.
Rocks me to sleep like lava tides
under the red-lightning sky.
Wake up to the sound of rain on tin
stained glass early shadows
velvet thumping gentle cars
birdsong in a forest of malachite.
A mudslide and questions for California
hushed upon the distance.
X is subject to rapid total change
in time without effort.
I saw shit everywhere.
Bad burgers sat in my stomach like poverty.
Fat clouds of silence my art
my words now brilliant for fools
hemorrhaging money
a golden liver begging more.
The get-yourself-together-and-forget-it-man
well-wishing friends prescribed
wore thin as I found memories in song.
She's there again in the bedroom. Not naked but not clothed. The bluebirds listen deeply. Silent summer air. Our bodies mortared with sweat in the attic. It is late afternoon, and lace on the sun.
We Have Been Thinking
I sleep. I wake. I go.
And the dream ends with its understanding.
In a pile of cloud that never was
the breath of myth balanced on air.
What happens when the light of god
has no effect upon the flowers in you?
Do you not ascribe your flowers
to a different source when they arise?
The Rain Puzzle
If this is what awaits us
is it not a miracle?
Yes or no is either
side of the wrong answer.
And maybe some heartbroken heart
finds comfort in this sympathetic hurricane
moving together toward the end
forgetting the punishing stars.
Maybe not and I’ve misplaced
all that's real of human value.
Maybe we go round like crazy beasts
with evanescence hampered
by temptation-to-endure.
Maybe X is A and B is % and sad
to emerge, gladiator
in a stadium of infinite blood
given no option but to wrestle with monsters
living like the spasms of a severed limb
acting out of habit
like everything is there
Death dies beside us.
Blood light kiss.
Form breath rain.
The senses we know are an industry
burning up stimuli
and we’re just jaded ogres
complaining the sun today was too golden.
And in the End, Another
The Earth has no regard
for its sometime ability
to take its latest wild components
and twirl our tissues in a soul
that feels, chewing dip in twilight angles
the pain of men howling in the street
giving up a broken Gloria
under blue sonnet skies
rainclouds like aircraft carriers
sweeping the west.
Taxonomy’s impossible
and the mood is uncharted
and moments explode
into light
pink
green
brief
as love.
Like a demon to damnation
everything must go—
misdeeds and planets miracles crowns
the juiciest tears
ready to flow
from drug-company actor on cue.
Diversions kissed-together
are now clouds, roll away.
Words that once ignited me.
Promises seemed-real.
◆◆◆
Starlings and seagulls
on the cables of big ships
shake their heads
like thoughts are stuck
and the sky turns
other shades
of pink and gold
and bigger blue
that bring the rain.
Other shades, as if to say
these are not the only options.
Alternatives await
if you let time and space
catch up to you
But accept without choosing
the rainbow left behind.
Fog may drift upon the hippocampus
and cloud the severity of things seen so clearly
you may know more
than in a lifetime as a little god
or a veteran pawn.
If you need to know more
your journey ends here.
These words you may remember.
You may immediately forget.
Such is the memory of a child.
Remember when the night turns wild
when you find yourself in fear
you can take these words
and blow them to the sky.
2014