Men and the Seasons

It is a cold winter and men

are bringing bombs on planes again

to demonstrate that explosions

are not seasonal.

I don’t know to what events women

bring bombs, although I’ve read

in the Times that they do

and in all kinds of weather.

Maybe the sacrifice of life consumed

by concussions and fires are meant to change

drought into rain. I’ve read about that too,

what men do to ask the gods for favors:

Virgins thrown into volcanoes,

men thrown off temples,

sliced necks and bloody grass skirts --

death as a tool to incite change.

It is unfortunate we keep forgetting,

the seasons change naturally, bombs

and gods do not control the weather. It seems

we are stuck in the four season cycle of violence.

Up Close

the glossed fibers of the box,

as I saw them last, were accentuated by the finish,

the deep coloring that makes wood look more

like the wood of our scrutinous imagination;

we saw each fiber clearly,

years we counted as children

packed together under the pressure of life

and again, in dirt, with your death;

is it coincidence or irony we bury, both,

seeds of life and embalmed shells of minds we loved

encased in embalmed arboreous corpses?

you would say nothing if I asked this,

partially because you are no less

than six feet away from me at any given moment,

partially because your consciousness, as I imagine it,

is too close for me to touch, our mouths gummed shut

Where There is No Distance

Amidst cries and clothes torn from the body

encircling the wooden chest where her body is lain,

instants of silence bring the hand of God, his finger

fixed upon the observer, the daughter’s daughter’s son.

At first, nothing, the peace of mind’s silence; but currents

from the Holy finger jolt the brain, shatter peace from its nucleus,

the silence temple broken, the language of God no longer abused

as thoughts begin to speak, a blue wave’s light crash upon a white beach.

Glorious lies from the archives of consciousness glint with soft light

but burn like a spark to the skin as space is kept but reticence dies,

the brown forever wrinkled skin of her face unembalmed emerges

to meet God. They go in silence and all that is left are the bones of memory.

I, the grave robber, salvage these gems, dissect them to the marrow

and show no one the findings. Only my notes are left, the marginal text

aside the equation between us and paradise -- she told us to be kind, to pray,

to believe in God, but only through the murder of His silence can they be together.

The overcast sky compounded

with the gloomy autumn cold is filled

with chatter about things that are

out of our control. I am back home now,

wondering What are we supposed to do

with these things? It seems lessons

taught to young men by their fathers

are put on hold. Chasing dreams is a jog

kicked into marathon gear. We hop along

quietly, worried about the ration of our air.

Riding my bicycle through my old neighborhood,

my neighborhood once again, I notice

the bags under the high schoolers’ eyes;

the way their corpse-bodies drag,

dressed in clothes that self-motivate;

their nervous and analytical shoulder twitch

fueled by the shaky promises fed -- it will be better

by the time you are where they are, their finger

pointed slyly in my direction.

I swerve home, fighting against the wind,

and, finding myself alone, in my high school room,

I laugh maniacally. I can’t stop. My eyes squint

so hard, tears leak onto my cheek.

Scripted confidence

is unleashed a mangy wolf.

No one knows

I cannot read brains like a mirror.

Sometimes I forget

to breathe while talking.

My lungs squeeze

to mother spurious phrases.

Confused signals

father shrapnel in my eyes.

Lord, help me

find what I want to say

before Death

extinguishes my mind

and my solipsism

becomes a garden of ashes.

Follow me on this

follow me on this,

ideas orbit; they are miniscule but bright,

fill rooms with thread connecting our heads together

so when a single person tilts their head in repulsion

another is attracted in complete covalence

as if every sentence began with

follow me on this

follow me on this,

Billy likes Susie; she is thin and smart,

their minds want to connect, their bodies are in agreement,

their mouths tilt with their heads, together,

thoughts become superfluous and flee the room,

where Susie mounts the bed and says,

follow me on this

Taper me by slivers

down to the bone

make every inch hurt

from the first flake of skin

to the last crack of marrow,

accurate and exacting

organs abound

neatly in their place

forever caught between

thin sheets of glass

bloodless but sanguine

in their immortality.

Split them for your own

science or pleasure;

look at them, look at me,

look at you, flying in between

my hips and dreams,

my screams and lunch,

my brain and shoulders,

my hands and love;

find the music inside me

draw breath from your nostrils or

just draw my nostrils,

sketch my winding globular soul.

Then reassemble my surgical home

and wholly see my painted smile

eyes shut in what I believe

is the heaven-ascension,

a portrait dream

of a white smocked-God,

my ichor rivers still running

down his beautiful body,

a cloud in the sky rifts open

and I am sent up slide by slide.

The fragments of my lambent heart

pulse light between the breaking glass.

Three Quick Things 10/07/09

Today I found out passion is like soup,

sometimes confused

with broth,

that speaking to three people is scary,

speaking to three-thousand is scary,

writing to none is death,

and that it is okay to quit

slurping broth

if you thought, at first, it was soup

a little brain warm up I did this morning

a cloud, a clot, a clam, scoliosis economy, [a little lighter than we came in], we will come out, what do you know about any of this? have you read

this in the news? the news? who writes the news anymore? all i ever get to read is fully disclosed endorsements for weight loss berries, cleaning products, and dance mixes, people to fix up my stitches, make me frankenstein-monster-whole, take away my debt, take it away,

give me a new one, take that one, charge it on this, move it over here, put it in a box, shake it, stir it, write about it because it from the viewpoint of an egg, a snail, a bucket, my lunch, take that too, I am trying to munch on these berries and become the number 0 or 1, even numbers are deprecating when it comes to their image

A flower seen from many different perspectives.

I see a flower,

again,

from the left,

from the right,

I see a flower,

again, from the left

from the right, I see

a flower, again, from the left

from the right, I see a flower,

again, from the left, from the right

I see a flower, again, from the left, from the right,

I see a flower,

again,

from the left,

from the right,

I see a flower, again

from the left, from the right, I see

a flower, again, from the left

from the right

I see a flower,

again,

From the left, from the right, I see a flower,

again, from the left, from the right, I see a flower, again,

from the left, from the right, I see

a flower, again, from the left, from the right,

I see a flower, again, from the left

from the right,

I see

a flower,

again, from

the left,

from the

right, I

see a

flower, again,

from the

left, from

the right

I see a flower, again, from the left, from the right, I see a flower, again, from the left, from the right, I see a flower, again, from the left, from the right, I see a flower, again, from the left, from the right, I see a flower, again, from the left, from the right, I see a flower, again, from the left, from the right, I see a flower, again, from the left, from the right, I see a flower, again, from the left, from the right, I see a flower, again, from the left, from the right, I see a flower, again, from the left, from the right, I see a flower, again, from the left, from the right, I see a flower, again, from the left, from the right, I see a flower, again, from the left, from the right,

I see a flower,

again,

Three Quick Things 10/06/09

Today I found out

that skid row isn’t that bad,

when sitting in a locked and moving car,

that the person who weighs less

isn’t necessarily the healthier

of the two,

and that the quality and quantity

of the poems I write

are directly correlated.

BONUS POEM: Slugtrail Slime

Take me

to the place

where you want

me to be.

I will be

where I am

taken.

I will root

into the soil,

grow

for a thousand years

even if it equals only one

stretch of slugslime

from a slimetrail

slug.

aphorisms and notes to a tired and confused youth

This is not sagely advice.

Take what you are entirely, knowing

that it is full of half-truths and unwarranted regrets;

dissect and categorize each puzzle piece.

Know that you will no longer be you tomorrow,

each action depends on who you are

but the brain changes with each experience;

take advantage of the ones you can control.

Don’t worry about the stock market,

that was fucked up before we got here.

Believe in horoscopes, gravity formed you

while you were still in developing fetusdom.

The Sun, Moon, stars and planets, light years away

are your distant relatives, they move oceans

and helped design your DNA.

Split larks, listen to music, memorize poetry,

it makes you smarter and passes time

that you may otherwise find yourself

just passing.

Dissect sentences as you would yourself,

turn phrases into organs, make them bloody.

Question each question with a scalpel;

forget what you know and know something new.

Be a pioneer. You follow in the footsteps of great failures

that took decades to perfect. Make them bigger.

Rest up. You are supposed to spend one-third

of your life sleeping so it is probably important;

but don’t forget that today is your last day on earth

and the memories you have tomorrow, of today,

are the fictions you will write poems about next year

when you are a distant relative of who you are

at this moment, birthed from the last.

A Bleak Response to an Older Generation's Concern

I am afraid that we know no better than you.

I am afraid that cycles of cruelty and destruction will spiral

on and on until fire melts our sidewalks and skyscrapers.

I am afraid that human consciousness will be left cracked and burdened

with such a terror in its core that an individuals mind

becomes the last object not an enemy’s weapon.

I am afraid that we will continue to believe

that knowledge can be sucked from empty lungs

and that chains and drenched faces

will give us inillusory power.

I am afraid that hell is calmly perched outside our doorstep

with dark corvid feathers and a thirst for flesh, like ours;

patient, it knows the thin wooden slab will one day invitingly open

where a feast of our eyes and innards will be laid out on expensive chinaware.

I am afraid that hell already knows that the door is unlocked.

I, too, pray that God absolves us all--

because I am afraid that we are too late to ask for his forgiveness.

he eats an avocado lunch alone

taking small spoonfuls of fresh green

between reminders of high-fat content

and counter-arguments that

it is the good kind of fat

later, he asks himself,

is my waist shrinking

or are my hips growing?

in the tidy silent bathroom --

his shirt unbuttoned

each side flung behind him

as if to mimic paper in the wind.

A Number of Complaints I May Have on Any Given Day

I am tired.

I am tired of reading about love.

I am tired of reading about wars.

I am tired of reading about God.

I am tired of my apathy

and you caring too much about the world.

I am tired of your wet desensitized face

and my evil laughter.

I am tired of not enjoying wine.

I am tired of not enjoying you.

I am tired of sleep.

I am tired of sun.

I am tired of church.

I am tired of humanity.

I am tired of Shakespeare

and allusions to Henry IV pt. 1.

I am tired of watching television.

I am tired of thinking.

I am tired of not knowing enough.

I am tired of reading.

I am tired of writing.

I am tired of writing to be smart.

I am tired of writing to be liked.

I am tired of writing to be different.

I am tired of writing to be better.

I am tired of not getting any better at writing.

I am tired of not making any money.

I am tired of money.

I am tired of using poetry to escape.

I am tired of not knowing enough poetry.

I am tired of getting smarter.

I am tired of being stupid.

I am tired of tomorrow

and its predictability

and its mystery

and its chaos

and the revelations it holds

and its sobering wake-up

and drunk sleepiness

I am tired of wearing pants.

I am tired of being naked.

I am tired of seeing how much better you look then me naked.

I am tired of wishing I were you

and wishing I had your progress.

I rifle through my brain

as I would a fruit bowl --

sifting through lobes of dull cantaloupe

and honeydew meanderings

for thought raspberries

to masticate and ponder.

Sure, I like my honeydew thoughts

and basic motor-functions

but what I really want is a rare,

specific tang

of electrical firings

and neuro-transmitter juices --

I am searching for a fresh moment

to pluck and savor.

People Keep Telling Me the 20somethings are a Difficult Time

Still at this age, my crudbug child dramatics

split my conscious brain

like dried motel soap, too late

to clay together its pieces.

It is embarrassing to be haunted

by the crayon-sketches on the bathroom walls,

a cave painting,

showing the next evolution of self

where the last one became extinct --

a corpse of consciousness

zombie self -- clawing to be remembered.

I think too much,

and ask myself questions like

where do I begin? drunk on solipsism

and California wine. And don’t pretend

to act all cool like you don’t do it too.

You and I both know, in front of a mirror,

standing alone, naked,

we slick back our wet hair and make faces,

practice our reaction to the drudge ahead,

wide mouthed looks of surprise

and half-blinks, we try to live in slow-motion.

I can’t share your consciousness, but I practice

these contortions because I was born at twenty

then again at twenty-three,

neither times from fire or ash,

or with any great vengeance in my heart,

just a need to not remember.

So take me to be grounded,

into the soil

to cake my fingernails

and allow my flesh to be eaten green.

It is death death and rot

that I can dig out of the fertile earth

and emerge breathless, panicky,

positioned fetally in mud and rain,

laughing because I forgot yesterday.