As if there was all the time in the world

 As if there was all the time in the world
as if there were no lines to wait in
as if my mind with mud wasn’t filled
and about to explode or implode in

to itself that dream will never come true
to itself going round like no tomorrow
to itself moments end & never continue
to itself the world is filled with sorrow

I’m running backwards I see the past now
I’m seeing faces that have always been gone now
through tears that come hard and fast now
I’m seeing faces that are up there in heaven now

They’re looking down I know they’re smiling
They’re looking down and they forgive all
They hold me, they’re not controlling
They’ve seen worse but also the beautiful

The ancestors know that its all passed down
& the struggle for goodness and joy is here
& those who deny it are missing the sound
of a cosmic song ringing in this inner…

Ear…

Prayer

 Prayer

      I am
        me
    and no
        one
          else.

        I turned away
    to find myself
           from under
            all this rubble.

I had to go to
    find my shadow.

   I had to go to find my
brother and sister.

    I’m looking for my
        power.

    I’ve been space holding
   for so long, and
covering over and
        drifting wide.

    Not writing the 
letters of intent.
         Of regret.
            Of heaven sent.
            Of descent.
    Missing meanings.
        Short faces.

        Hold on together
     to this long wind
        of blessed air.
 
        Not in
                that
                           space…

Write it out...

    If I could write it out 
of my blood and bones
that would be perfect. 
Bit by bit, unspooled, 
withdrawn. Freed from. 
The left hand could take from 
the right. The mind 
could pull out from the heart. 
The little toe could 
become it’s own country. 
My eyes could see the view, 
the lay of the land, 
not as a map but as a maze 
and once again
I am lost in tomorrow. 
Empty sleepy dreamless.

            And who would know 
what she ever intended? 
What joy she had in being
there, in wanting 
something together.
In never wanting to leave. 
In some
infinite touch.

The Line and the Circle O/

/O

  from a Sonic Sandbox jam

 (click to 1:06:10)

The Line Goes and Goes
While the Circle Holds
-the philosophy/story below delineates some interesting factoids about a couple of geometric shapes which may or may not have something to do with our experience of time, death, love, holding, inside and outside.

D - trumpet
S - synthesizer
H - sax and philosophical story

D - (asking S about the synth)- What else you got in that box?
S - Circles and arrows.
D - Let’s hear the circles and arrows.
S - You just heard it.
D - What else?
S - Oh well… (looks down, starts twisting buttons..)
H - I’ve heard the world is made of circles and lines.
D (still talking to S) - Do you have zig zags? Do you have rectangles? Parallelograms? Do you have…
H - Have you ever thought about the idea that a circle is a line that comes back to itself? Right? In other words, there’s only two things in the world, circles and lines..
S - Well… That’s one way of looking at it. … Seems like an oversimplification… (shrugs) Who am I to say..
H - Lines can make geometric shapes. ..continuing with my theory. (takes off sax strap..)
Lines can make geometric shapes. In other words, geometric shapes and circles. (D starts on trumpet, S on synth…)
S - Not a circle but shapes ?
H - Yea, not a circle, its a geometric shape (?)
S - Well a circle is a geometric shape..
H- Right well i’m just curious and I’m thinking maybe I could split the world into two. 
S - You can always do that.
H - Circles and … everything else!
S - Ones and twos…
H - (Really focusing on developing the theory/story now…) A circle happens to be a line that happens to come back to itself.
For some reason, it can’t let go! It returns! (trumpet and synth are louder) 
It swoops around! 
It comes back, it can’t let go of itself! 
The line! 
The line could not let go of itself!
And became a circle.
S - a circle?
H - The circle could hold many things!
The circle could hold rain.
The circle could hold berries.
The circle could hold love.
The circle could hold pain.
The circle could hold need.
The circle holds!
The circle holds!
Whereas the line, the line escapes!
The line escapes into outer space!
The line is not holding on!
To itself any longer!
It’s let go of itself!
It will not be a circle!
It will never be a circle.
Once it launches off into outer space it never returns.
It goes straight off into infinity.
The line knows infinity!
The line knows infinity.
The circle knows HOLDING!
Maybe, you can’t have holding and infinity at the same time.
Maybe you just can’t have them both.
You can either have infinity, if you’re a line, or
if you go with holding on to yourself, holding on
to a self, round about, circling about and holding on
to itself,
you have finity..
You have alot of finity in that circle.
Alot of gooooood finity!
You got a lot of finity…
(strapping on the strap and then the horn)
You know what else, you’ve got an inside and an outside, with the circle. 
You’ve got an inside…
Does the line have an inside?
No. The line does not have an inside!
The line might have infinity but it has no inside.
It has no outside!
The line has no inside and it has no outside!
It goes and goes. It goes and goes…
and goes and goes and goes and goes
and goes and goes (starts playing sax…)

(30 secs later)
H - The line goes and goes… (plays another riff)
While the circle holds…
(another riff which keeps going with David and Steve..)
H - Now what happens if the line goes through the circle?
Right through the middle of the circle.
That sounds a little like sex of some sort..
I don’t know, sounds a little like . . magic.
Sounds a little like… hitting the target
sounds a little like … 
sounds a little like a punctuation mark.
right? you have a line you have a circle,
the line is going right for the circle.
its going to hit the circle
the line and the circle..
exclamation!
exclamation point!
its the point!
its the exclamation point!
(plays sax again, D plays the steel drums…)

Dada Manifesto

 This is a Dada Poem
    that has no meaning!
This is a dada manifesto
    that means nothing!
Blah! Blah! Blue! 
    Blink twice
and you’re here: blink
    thrice and I’m 
    
    here.
Blink four anonymous
    boring fart times
and we’re dead.
    Dead together.
In excruciating pain
    of loneliness,
    despair
and existential angst
    -iness.
Ho - hum.
Dada says goodbye.
Dada says see ya later
    alligator.
Dada says another day
    fly away.
Dada says
                

woopsee.
   

             bloopsee.

Somany somany somany

 The result of unknown years, just as well. Like somany somany others, a product of sheer imagination. He wished to know, but answers were elusive. Dreamed of going, but that was a different day. Automatically pushing, always pushing. Like the Year of the Boar, on steroids. And then there were none, why I don’t know. Answers on feathers, answers like songs. Songs without words, usually songs without words. Pure sensation, very consistent with transcendence in clouds. Or dripping, CHANGING EVERYTHING, not afraid of talking in groups. Expected to be cognizant of something, besides the wall of tears. I don’t know what happened, but I care immensely. Like an abyss I’m constantly falling into, and can’t get out of. Thoughts crowd round, don’t you wish we could go back to the beginning
AND DO IT ALL OVER
AGAIN?

Home Trauma

 Traumatized by HOME

I live in the fire of tomorrow.

What do I know that you

        Don’t?

    S  L  O  W
        
        M  I  N  D
    
    H  E  A  R  T 
    
        S  P  E  E  D

    hibernation

                welcome little Me

            to 2026.
    
    The first Me was swept 
overboard on the way over here.

There’s a before 2000 and
a beyond 42K.
        
Grandfather zapping me from
    beyond the grave,
    round about 1980,
thirty years after his death.
Did I help bring Father to
his promised land?
I was visited by Grandfather
right after Father passed on.
I could see his smile and
I wept.
Remember I am the one who
can cross over and return.

Someone jumped aboard my
traveling vessel there’s not
room for us both at all
times. Very harsh to be
speaking at all times to someone
who can not hear me. They
live in another city. Or
they are in the inbetween.

    Oh Lover don’t you know
how impossible it is for almost 
anyone to be blessing
everything in the home
at all times? I cursed
yes I cursed. I’m sorry
I cursed now that I’ve
seen the Flame. Felt the
spark. It’s as if I blew out
the candle too soon. The candle
of our love together. I blew
it out forever. You’d have to
light it yourself. And I can’t
yet imagine that happening.

    Mixing and matching.
    
Noon, high noon.
Will there be a shoot out
    today?
    Eyes like machine guns.
Thoughts like bombs.
I’d rather get lost in my
hibernation. And learn to
dream again. As leader
of little Me and the crew
of a ship to somewhere.

Dirt and the Eternal Flame

 Reconnect to the Eternal Flame

DREAM

He wants a kit for everything. For the ages.

Every time one moves
one leaves it all behind.

and so somehow
left to Father myself
little Huey
liar and fantasist
fantasist of trips
through a Hades…
Gone fishing in Hades…

Dream of finding the right teacher. A teacher.

A teacher of night.

Darkness       Darkness
and                and 
doubles.        doubles.

Aloneness
and paths
while carrying
3 rings of gold.
Each of my parents and
mine without J_____.

Boom not a movie anymore.

All the money is wasted of course.

No one believed it was
possible…   L  O  V  E     !

Emojis of steel.
    of oil.
    of dirt.
    unanswered.

DONE TWICE.

I know too much but not enough...

 You can’t know too much at any one moment can you? Exploding myths and mice swarms, scrambling mice, the gall, the underside but there isn’t one. Mothers know all, as a group, but the other mother knows more. Fathers therefore know nothing having left on the evening shuttle bus to the luxury hotel and casino. SPEND all of your money at once, roll the dice. The tension, without breath or poetry. And a star collapses somewhere nearby upon which the answer remains ‘NO!’ as always and other non-sequiturs such as frowns, instant giggles, reappraisals, juniper beads, no I mean berries, and drifting snake-oil salesmen who come for me en-mass, they look like real zombies, unkempt and ragged, desperate.

Disappear into the imagination to escape the un-real world. Injured warriors and children misplaced. I went back to a dreamless sleep and walked away unharmed. I didn’t forget about you, I hold you like a treasure in a vault, though I’ve thrown away the key. I’m hoping you’ll fly soon, first as a ghost going through walls, then as an angel with the Goddess’s ear, if she’s not too busy which she always is. Trying to save herself from the war between the sexes. That endless battle to redefine ‘Earthling’. And to find a new home, one without a target on the roof, or little notes put up here and there defining the amount of patience left remaining to spend in the universe.

round it...

 Bump it. Round it.
Sink it further than the dirty water
washing machines spew.
Found out, did she, about me?
I don’t think so but
what do I know about myself?
There’s fourteen threads of thought
feeling the web of entrails.
Echoing or mirroring
what someone else said
and how they said it.

Say Something

 No one says a word
and I don’t either. 
Ghostly but present
friends are always speaking
but what is the trombone?
The goldfish found it. Drink it
all day and all night. All night
and all evening. Stars twinkling,
city lights, a solitary street light.
The moon, a dog
howling.
Woo-ooo.

Awash

     Aaah for one cup of coffee.
To give or not to give?
    A flavor of nice with twenty
sandwiches of different varieties.
    Circles that don’t answer.
Love in-bounds is a dream.
    Something to say that is
more like the quiet of a pond
    with frogs and lily pads.
Oodles of emphasis on
    not knowing enough yet.

Stop back later

 when you step back or under
far side or plunder not
don’t see, blinded, a tree
a rock a fallout queen
a drift of snow…
how long how long
the long long time.
but no, not yet not dead
not dropped but held
held open like a belt
like a bolt and like a bingo
game, everyone is concentrating
following, flinging, 
there is hardly any saving
any savior, any time
left now…
the expanse goes on
and on…

Knocked on my heels

 Knocked on my heels
as if I had any,
my body as if I was
blessed by the friendships,
so long ago, and then
she eats fine when we sit
down together, I see my father
bowed down at the table,
gone south, my brother gone
west, and Kirk goes to
Africa, such travelers, because
there’s a home to come back to,
not an internet, not yet,
not til yesterday and so
today I’ve no body I’ve
decided, somewhat out of
rhythm and forever gonzoed
like falling over sideways
into the mess that
defies gravity, it rises
up as if a cloud into
all our nostrils, you can’t
escape it, the dust is
horrifically diverse, from
anywhere blown in by
those raging winds or even
the gentlest breeze this
dust is so light.

        It’s possible that if I
think of phallocentric I
    should remember I’m
        dust in the wind.

Animals (rant)

Hate and revenge? Difference, why? Meltdown compensation. 
And just because I don’t understand why, am I lost? 
Sailing away, on undercurrents, from Hades to Hades.
I gave away my innocence and then they took it. 

The chorus. The squabblers. I became a story. 
The story. The only story ever told is a complete lie. 
Youth. No budget for the whole truth. Arms and legs missing. 
An egg. And if I might be so bold as to assert that it was 

when I was a preteen that it came down, like the laws of Moses
that the everyday is political, like a hammer, like a gloved velvet hand 
that squeezes. Like in 1972 Vietnam came to Philly. I’m a Gulliver still
getting squeezed more and more, til my insides are out.

Invisible ink, I understand now! What is the theory of this? 
An anti-history, or possibly an absence of it all. The shocking truth
of how the Anarchists couldn’t agree with the Marxists 
at the First International, or when that Buddhist monk

was sitting so erect and he’s burning like a candle. 
And my acquaintance, Kathy Change, she did the same
over on Penn’s campus near that button statue next to 
the post-modern library, the one that has its back to the street.

If anything I’d like to understand modernism and/or
postmodernism in terms of proportion: pre-modern 33%, 
good old modernism 33%, and post-modernism 34%. 
So the scales are tipping! Ever so slightly! When, right now?

Or next week? AI can translate and then the last barrier 
to a singularity will be gone, I expect the apocalyptic slide
to become un-refusable, oh about July 2029. I predict one
of those dates popping up like 9/11: 7/28/29. 

Seven twenty eight twenty nine! If only I had a voice! 
No wait 7+2+8+2+9=28 so two+eight=10 which is 1, 
One 1 one 1 one!!! The singularity, oh no! 
Oh yes!

Death Star Mechanics

I am here. I can’t see with
my hands until I let go of eventual
death star mechanics. Crusty heads pin point
eyes over the land with fingers tapping
everywhere until never-the-less.
Letting go of eyes means feeling everything
finally. Dropping light
is impossible until I find
the right question. Squares are two mirrors.
Voices rounding off the fearful corners
I’m stuck in. Windows that won’t
open and things I can’t buy.
Noises. Dreams.


Note: when I got out of high school I traveled around that summer. I also saw Star Wars 5 times for some reason.

Nothing Inside All!

 

I.        Nothing inside all
        M A T T E R S !
        Not! Inside! All!
        mattering . . .
        this muttering . . .
        a little joke. drama.
    fortuitous inter splicing.
            Anti - carnivorous.
                Sudden houses.
            Steel underwear.
                Blinking
                in the new dark.
        Drivel guided tours
                on television.
            Without an accent.
        Before the end of string.
    Weapons of a million fingers
        simultaneously tapping.
    Headaches, muttering in
meadows under cliffs guarded
by gigantic insects with
sci-fi visions. …received a
pulse, about ten minutes long,
from the center of the earth.
            
II.            Earthlings!
            Earthlings!

    Code for life, understood.
        Stand on your head
        after eating nothing
        for twenty nine
        small minutes.

III.        I’ll have better luck 
with the nextone,
the nextone, 
the nextone. 
This one is 
burned out from the inside. 
It wasn’t a dream. It was the
lack of words at the proper
moment. Only the sound of ______.
    He never had a chance
in the center of the spiral . . . 
His third eye closed before it
could open. Scant days,
mostly nights. Breathe the
air, take air as a drug of
choice. Remember. You still
have a mother and a father.
Somewhere.

IV.     The holding. 
The all - in - one rock 
band with a singer
who remembered but then
forgot the words. They
muttered. The muttering
drove the bass player mad.
Mad with grief. A passing.
Enough mattering to fly.
A crow over the meadow
and into the city to a
certain counter-intuitive
tree. A tree, the wide
river, the oil tanks
oozing, the city and its
sirens. Three nods from
the executioner, who
scratches her temple
absentmindedly. “Never have
we known about this until
you told us,” intoned the
breeze sweetly in the ear
of a flashy beetle, who
had been around the world
twice. “I know you don’t
want to hear this,” goes
the beetle, “but there is
no more human sex. There
is no more feeling in those
moving parts of the planet earth.
Those walking, oozing, and
dripping parts.” Beetle:
“It’s gone, numbed out into
non-existence, no response any
longer. The brain is fried in those
spots. No pleasure anymore.
Sorry for you and all your
descendants! Good luck with
that!”
    Beetle goes on, while casually
munching on a third tasty
leaf: “Dream on, humans!”

    “Electric dreams
            from here on out!”

        and with a wry smile

    “Text me a selfie when
you get nowhere!”

Dissappearing Ink

     Dissapearing ink to write the longest word possible and then discovering the antidote to make the word veiwable to hyphenate any words together and thus create new meanings. Liberatory meanings. Distracting meanings. Nauseating meanings. So we all throw up together into one gigantic cookpot in the sky and the firestoms of climate change cook it all up -no wait, the fire-nados of climate change come together like in that Beatles song and we imagine that John Lennon was never shot dead and Yoko Ono's heart was never broken so,        and . . .      well, I won't go on . . . 

Little Hugh finds the RAGE!!?!

 Saturday 1/10 RAGE!!
-little Hugh finds the RAGE!!

Afraid to solo
but when I’m older than everyone else
    no one tells me shit
        i should know
and then its all over
    before its begun.

    Time doesn’t know
        about yesterday or tomorrow
    while dust gathers
            cars smash cars
    my parents live on and on
        thank Goddess!

How to rub shoulders?
    Ignoring the deeper truths.
        Studying life. Not anger.
            Rage ! ! !
                Not RAGE
                    Not RAGE
                        again!?

    What thoughts of freedom
are going through you, of
    life freedom!? Not
        death freedom!!
            Its all about being
        a Good boy, isn’t it?
    Deserve no spanking
            no incarceration
        no eviction
        no dry time
    dry out drunk.
It takes once-again-time
Once-again-time for any
    alcoholic they wish they
were a coffee-holic. (Still
a danger to themselves and others
but in a different area.)
        And no one wants
            to know not
        even Jesus Christ
            All-mighty the
                one
                and
                only
                savior
                of
                HELL.
        The savior of hell…

I wish someone else kept
    -my bank for me.
    -all lists for me.
    -all my dreams in a
        notebook I could read
        at my leisure when
        I get to heaven.
(and let it be known, my
    heaven is electro-acoustic.)
Digital hell mixup.
Analogue electro-acoustic
    nonsense heaven.

My suggestion:

Record each piece
    three times
    AND WITH a guest
            star.

thereby showing the 
        malleability.

        the draconian
                    malleability.

    And so you see, older Hugh,
there’s a target on your back. You
can go from the black dot to the
laser light red dot. I mean,
you’ll never actually SEE it,
    for real, the actual real glow
        of the laser light
            on your back
    
            (you are allowed to
                feel it
            just as Mama Earth
        feels the distant glow of Daughter 
Moon as she slides round
        her endlessly wide belly
    pulling tides and all glory!)

The laser red light of RAGE!
            In the night, RAGE!
            In the day, RAGE!
            All the money, RAGE!
            All the sorrows and
                    griefs in their arms,
                        RAGE!!

All the drippy dreams,
        the woo-woo wisdom
            of all the poets,
                    RAGE!

        Melting.
                The acid rain washing
                        Machine.

 Only the fighters
                    need comfort.

Disappear into the preset day

                 Disappear into the preset day
Envelop black shadows stairs down
                    Cold basement dreams
                        are not fantasies
Are not possible in the wrong crowd
        Who is listening only the poets
who have not heard enough poetry yet
            (probably not daughters or sons
    of poets themselves)
                jealousy or… schadenfreude…
        lost sunglasses beside the car
                    thanatophobia…
            translating all the time is WORK.

    …how primary parents know things
                the books about to fall over
the house feels stuffy
                    looking up at first light
            through southern pine trees
    dark teak table scrolled carved leaf shapes
                airy base
                    orange red mod colored plate
    holding tea and milk in stainless
steel cup (still around from days
        of my youth)
                        still a blank

            waiting for filling

        (you’ve never felt like writing?)

5) David Duchovny

David Duchovny
is naked
& on the
floor!

A quick dark alien,
a long haired dude
in a Che tee shirt,
a bureaucrat mustache
with a gun
leans over to
vaguely threaten all

those in the dry ice
smoke filled room.
“I heard it was the
lone gun man,”
he says.

A commercial for
Eckankar
1 800 LOVE GOD
and then
Weight Watchers.

The answer
is: what would
David do?
“I’m not Geraldo!”
says other guy…

4) Imaginary Power

 “Imaginary Power,
Real Horizons
- The Practicality
of Utopianism”
looks like
a good

book, underneath this
poem. Meanwhile
the Eagles play a
meaningless game since
they’re already in.
But the grass, it looks

so good and green,
I can smell the mud
just about, like
when I was
fourteen and playing
myself.

I wonder where…
woops we lost the
signal, guess
we’ll watch X-Files

instead.

 

3) The third little booklet

 The third
little booklet
is so late
and tired
and drowsy

I think I’ll take
a nap on Sunday
afternoon, with the
football game on,
because who cares.

The Eagles are
already going to
the playoffs.
Wish I had
a vegan cheesesteak:

…the feeling of
SATIATION
when you’re
chomping down &

the Eagles
lose the
Supe.
Very
Philly.

2) The second one

 The second
one is always
later then
the first,
which is
why I’m
afraid

of poetry, especially
the type that
doesn’t rhyme
and
isn’t trying to. :(

 

 

Maybe draw pics
instead and
see what
…

WORKS.

1) The very first ONE!

 1

The very first ONE!

I forgot about
the special feeling
of the very
first one,

until I wrote
that title, which
popped into my mind
when i picked up
the pen.

I would’ve known
better if, instead
I’d been reading
my Nicanor Parra
book, which sits

under
my
phone
over
there
———>

Tesla trucks at Trump's Towers

 

 No clocks in prison, as if I would know. But when people are gone, they’re not gone. Not that it’s crowded here yet it’s more like a roller coaster. Not even a merry-go-round. Which used to be a big city draw. But now, everyone is on their phones. Pressing spots that are made to look like buttons, and then exploding. Incinerating brains and Tesla trucks at Trump’s tower. On the phone, on the phone, no clock on the phone.

 

Cuatros #1 & #2

 

also I invented a game for myself: Cuatros

As a possible method to get a dose of daily dada…

- 3 stanzas of four lines of two words each
- pick the 2nd or 3rd word that clearly comes to mind, not the first
- end with a different punctuation for each stanza
- meant to be somehow dramatic but also impossible to analyze (at least for me) and a way to open up the brain. Cover some territory but in a shallow way?! Escape from the judgmental mind with remaining questions of wether it represents a little bit of a scanning of my self.

Cuatros #1

Special always
negation never
proposal over
when time?

Loving throats
seething paces
silly negative
poppers uhhh!

janky slough
worms untie
orange world
whenever sling…

Cuatros #2

Tell forest
slate tallow
dig upside
sting wrangle,

Ten audiences
slag asunder
life lippage
destruction delinquent!

dawdle driving
hanging harassment
another queue
amazing gigalo?

WAYS OF THINKING

 

 WAYS OF THINKING

    the voice and its predecessors
when there was no worrying
about spelling through ages
just violent marks
that’s when I heard voices
oh that would never happen
to me unless it does
when writing in time

    ah it can’t be decoded
the spy game of self
overwhelmed by Whitman’s
long odes muttered to self
in the bathtub at my
Grandmother’s house
in Florida ’81 blue jays
squawking in the orange tree

(In the night God...)

 

 (In the night God...)

There is no truth so much as gravity
towards the molten center of Earth.
Scientists don’t understand it,
the blank page is addictive,
so we went to the store
with all the sweaty, bloody money
we could find and
grabbed things that might fit.
Pulling on three hats I turned
to look at her and she
said “I prefer her today.”
So I said only “hello”.
Hello to the check out person.
Hello to the bald sun
outside.
Hello to the tree
and to the house.
The house said nothing.
Mother here there everywhere.

Instantly before that I tried
to escape on a bicycle
and went 550 miles in 5 & 1/2 days
to school but they had no
answers so I left school
and did not look back.
Here there everywhere.
I should have become a teacher
then. So 50 years later
I see the truth:
Mother and nothing.
Father and everywhere.
Brother sister moon.
So hungry but I don’t eat.
(In the night God…)

It depends on the size of the page
because the moon is so far away.
But no one is screaming now
so far away I fell
without shoes.

Dawn

 

 

Dawn

    Who is holding whom?
I can’t tell, only the teacher
knows, the last one to be
there without tradition.
And what did they learn?
Holding on so tightly?
Attacked for it?
Forgotten by the children…
Between the words, it’s
always between the three
words: Be Here Now.
Sanity’s napkin.
There aren’t any straight lines
that I can find.
And only folds hold.

…First of all it’s dark.
Then everything emerges equally (from greyishness).
Then the sky gets brighter (a light blue)
and the builldings, trees, and earth
are dark with faint details.
Then more details and
more details. The light
wanders in here and there.
Colors begin to attach more so.
And now the darkness
is in the corners or
behind glass.

Not Wallpaper

 

The most divisive battle
in the world
is between parents!

The mind can’t go
without itself so
it starts in the middle
and tires without a road.
The end is never in sight
just exhausted light. Mix
up the sentences and never stop,
for breathing is so noisy
without words. Without plastic,
in the age of wallpaper and cold water,
bathtubs in the kitchen,
cockroaches in the clock.

No distractions now!
No steps, escalators in the hallways,
but no complaining. Its easier
than ever to fall in line.
And I forgot about the ones
I could not hear,
let’s spend some time again
in the same room.
No one ever really said anything
that I can remember,
but a side glance says it all.
From afar, glinting.

Revenge won’t happen
in this lifetime I think,
unless I drink more coffee.
The Ford trucks are so large
and menacing, my wolfman
knows the score. Just
don’t read the news everyday
now that armegeddon bores.
Outside the screen everyone
is always blurry even three feet
away and falling. I wish
and pray for a new way
to pray for a new day.

The colors are soft and bleeding
into each other, joining hands.
I’d rather just be in nature.

(Strarting over again at 2 and a half.)

Placating Moloch!?

 

 So I’m stuck between being able to speak in poetry or in digitalize. I want to go back to a resounding, before the age of plastic. Having read somewhere that before 1950 (or so) 90 odd percent of all materials people touched were of 6 main types: wood, glass, metal, food, ceramics and clothes, it’s clear we live suspended now in complex ingredients electrified by information. And it’s materially crazy, if you catch my drift, whereby sanity is clarity and for humans we have none available, once you’ve been sucked up into this sphere of beyond-plastic, could we call it the informatized-plasticized-electrified-earth-material reality? IPEEM. There is no clarity there and thus no sanity. And yet since it comes from the earth, in itself it’s confusing. Perhaps the best name for it is Moloch after all. As first mentioned by Rexroth and then triumphantly named and echoed into the stratosphere, alongside the cosmonauts and astronauts, by Ginsberg.
But I’m surprised it wasn’t mentioned by Diane DiPrima in ‘The Only War That Matters is the War Against the Imagination’. However I do see a tendency towards equality between the genders in that poem of course, and maybe ‘Moloch’, the word itself, is too testosterone filled, of course, and she didn’t even consider it, seeing as how it might be better to not even engage with that energy. You know, non-violence and all, which had it’s moment with Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi -the freedom of millions being won daily, in those heady days. So, no mention of Moloch and I’m proposing it’s a continuing line of energy worship, witness the continuing strength of punk rock, and metal, and cookie monster vocalizing.
I myself, have been vocalizing in my free form jam sessions with Fundrazers more like a chorus, towards that. With a little cookie monster and some ad lib almost gibberish. I once heard at my small Quaker boarding school, when I was around 15, a man get down on his knees at Meeting for Worship and do a whole speaking-in-tongues sing songy message to all of us youngster filling that light glazed meeting house, with the tall ceiling and the empty wooden benches up in the balconies. And it sounded fabulous and enlightening.
But I’m listening to Arvo Part, a contemporary Estonian composer, who evidently is mystically Catholic. And I’m understanding that if you want to have fifty or so people singing together, with clarity, its going to be clear notes sung by each and long tones are tending. Yea, sure it might be chanting or intertwining like Phillip Glass but it also might be long clear tones. And strange harmonies. If you want to ‘transcend’, fly out of, and soar above the fray of the war of Moloch. To look down and see the chaos, the pulse within there matching up to drums of the monotheistic and pagan apocalypse. Ah, the face of Moloch, the eyes flashing will freeze your bones, no doubt. Make them lighter I suppose, so you can fly higher.

 

PS I've just learned when searching for the above image that Moloch liked to sacrifice children. How f----g appropriate! Completes the story, during this phase of human existence where we see 'Childhood's End'. An interesting sci-fi story by Arther C. Clark published in 1953.

A Chance Castle

 

fuck all there never was a chance
bullets flying under and over
but still when and when
things bring it down but hugs bring it up
money a case logic castles a last chance
the jaws drop full of teeth
don’t don’t they’re screaming
through lips grasping

 

 

Always A Kiss Away

 

 Architecture and who do you want
    to kiss?
    Where is your hat, and where
can I say anything I want,
in order to
get it right? Not
a love poem but it is.
The Continent was slowly saturated
with the ancient wisdom
of the Greek’s anxieties,
Plato’s cave,
whilst Amerka listened backward
to the Iroquios
and stole a Constitution.
…It always seeps through
a little at least:
the Grandmothers’ whispers and
the Grandfathers’ songs.
Didn’t the Beats and Frank O’Hara
find their friends and yet
I’ve lost most of mine by now.
All those secrets untold.
The kiss and who
    wants it and why.
That’s where my mind
is at.

 

Birthday coming up...

 Birthday. 65. Unknown blahs. Blow it out like a 5 year old. The hope of an older man. Wanting my parents to feel ok. At peace. My siblings. Not torn up like only an unsatisfied writer could be. I know the unconsummated love of writing. Looking inside for a horizon, I find not one. Looking inside for an outline, I find so many, they merge into the shadows. Shapes move at night now for me, as if a wind blows from many angles. But I know, this isn’t possible. A big wind only comes from one corner. At a time.
A good writer believes nothing of what they see. The essence of goodness lives not on surfaces, or smooth appearances. I should be writing the book my Grandfather Willard wanted to write, or its opposite. Since I live in another era, I’ll choose the opposite, the version that has flowed through the looking glass of the twentieth century.
Though Willard Wattles died nine years before I was born I was fascinated with him, or some essence of him when I was a youth. Just the name: Willard, was a reverie for some reason. And the reason hovered near me, above me and I considered it and wanted to be in it. I was distinctly driven to learn to type, I remember realizing, go slow. Return each finger to their base key, as if there was energy flowing there, knowledge there in each finger. And soon enough each finger knows what to do, all of its own, as I think. It brings to mind some  kids movie about magic where the wizards fight and words, magic spells, are in their minds and mouths and the energy flows from their fingers like lightning bolts. Zapping at each other across the stormy air.
And this is how we learned to write in kindergarten anyways, so typing is a recapitulation of that, but two handed. If writing by hand is a cyclops, then typing is seeing the world in three dimensions with two eyes. A bimodal vision. And perhaps its even harder to let go of a three dimensional world than the world of a cyclops.
Around the same time, my younger brother wore an eye patch. He wasn’t ever the baby of our family unit though he was the last of four. He never complained or whined for more or had temper tantrums on the floor. Though now, I wish that he had, because I never did learn to see the shape of his need or desire til I looked back, into the four dimensions of my past and he spoke to me. And saved me from myself.
This is what Grandfather Willard would have wanted, me to listen to my brother.

Oh, Mother

 

 Oh, Mother, why did you
let down your guard and think
Christmas would ever come?
I am now you twice and
Father had no answer. But to
travel to the ends of this
earth, the abyss, always
the same one, in a mirror,
through a gate or bridge
or bedroom door. Not a word
could cover it fully.
Not a syllable or sound.
And I held your hand as you
got your new marriage,
under Canadian skies,
over blue waters and
choppy waves. Canoes take
hard work, paddling, paddling.
The portage is endless now,
between Misty and Timberwolf,
I look for the crook
of a tree.

Two Time Zones #2

 Two Time Zones #2

Can’t live in two time zones
at once straddling and thinking
straightly, about yourself and also kids.
It appears easy looking back but
the kids eternal now needs protecting
and joining, a joy, towards
this wider spanning so thin of
elder life. Not knowing better
of course, only coiled the same
but refraining and listening differently.
Echoes of ancestors where, on the flat?
I was torn off somewhere. I
should’ve written on the pages
booking it, stick it.

        Open arms again!
        This time with knowledge!
        The bird outside is whirring.

There aren’t the appropriate clothes
to wear any longer. Bring back
suit coats, bowties. Respect
for elders, in every way, because
of secrets, of poisons, of withholdings,
savings. Of things I know not yet.
Stunning things, new color
combinations from black and white
or choral voices in those
longed for chords.
The way my old friend was lying
there, poses natural and undying.
You can have me now,
it might be almost all used up.

The mist rises from the road and around it
marshes and boulders dropped by glaciers
I’m told. The further I go the harder it is to talk
to anyone except the animals. The real me, it seems,
the one without problems. Burdens all from
so far before, they are a dream I barely
remember, modern things explode
with a glowing banality. Flat earth returns steadily
a relative tsunami washing machine over
frightened faces.
Turn that frown
upside down!
Once tattooed
you’re committed to falling through.
Once a poet, always a poet.
Loving a good pen,
keeping pencils with their
tiny rubber eraser nearby.

We always want to say we’re sorry
when it’s too late. The gang
of us. Write smaller then
young Huey.

Bob's Last Tour

 No vision without
those glasses. A purple
pink brand. Over under
striped and repeating glow.
Letting go, I’m allergic,
like a lizard, teach
me how to be like
a human, its been so long
since anyone came around
this desert.
Friendly cactus.
Not a hugger.
A seer without glasses.
I try to meditate often
and share. Fell through
the floor. Dreamt big,
flew far. The sun aches.
The suburbs won. But
I wasn’t there. Forgot.
Listen, or I’ll tell you
the secret. The left foot
goes first in some dances.
Saying goodbye is not
hello, and hello comes
last in line, a bit tired
but eager. Too many
cars for me.
But only the poets would
understand the trade in,
so I’m doing music.
At least there’s a song,
a sing along, a Bob
Dylan, a Bob Marley.
His last tour I danced
in the back row, as if
he could see me.
But maybe the version
did me instead of me
doing the version.

the Whole Earth

 

 

 Half disconnected, the drain
is going strong it seems.
I reach for the switch and
it’s in the dark, a mouth,
the teeth gleaming.
So talk to me! But
I realize I’m
yelling at top level.
Nerves fraying fast,
I’m taking a chance
on you, resolutely
this time. Our fingers
touch. Our noses touch
like dogs.
To animals the only
cage is the
whole earth.

The Mountain

 

 You can have
everything you want
if you just try
too hard and
fall down on
your face smashing
the fourth dimension
into a million pieces
of a 5,000 year old bowl
that some small child
filled once with flowers
in a meadow in the woods
near a mountain
that stood so tall it loomed
over the land
like fortitude breathing.

The small child brought
the flowers home to
Momma who put them
in the kid’s hair
and meanwhile
I got my face up
and went on…

In the Apple Orchard

 If you can’t think
of something to do while
I’m here than
its leaving or going
that’s magic.
That’s all I know.
To wean off of Hollywood
and champions or
even romance it certainly
takes a dream, surreal,
falling from the skies of satellites
and missiles. Hate drifting
there, making heaven
look terrible, no haircuts
any longer, only tattoos.
What was your story?
A single stilt leaning
against a wall.
An apple orchard and
the moon above
all night. You would
get addicted. Freedom
never knew such bounds.
No flags, no dimes,
no drifting from the horizon.
All surprise.

Say 'Yes'

 

 

Say ‘Yes’ to Jesus once
in your lifetime and you’re
done for, like a bug
on sticky paper hanging
from the sky above.
Anywhere you go,
in other words.
Except and especially
underground or in houses,
even houses of the holy.
But those eyes, they
understand, and the wall’s
ears they hear, and
the great roar of trains
in tunnels speaks to you
like a chorus of angels.
Or any chorus even, since
you never go there do you?
Even the family is burning
now.
But you know there
is water.

Doctor Death

 

 Bored terrified
hated drawn as
a cartoon…
Living wrong.
Underdeveloped
ego for sale,
needs water
and sunlight.
Needs a stone aged
clock-less social
life, one without
weapons, the Shakers
perhaps. A spirit
of simplicity leaning
towards transcendence.
I’m not aging gracefully
yet, all in all. No
one to save except
myself and I don’t
know how. Tai Chi.
And other sci fi novels
digitized under my
tongue, by way of
the nose. People don’t
even look at me, properly
invisible, especially when
journal writing. Filling
pages with snot. ‘Woke’
agony, a soup I made
in my twenties reappeared
in the frig, properly
spiced it might do for
my guest’s breakfast,
if they wake up
because I can’t.
I’m flat. Lost all
my friends last week
in the Battle of Mid
Century furniture vs
Gothic underwear.
Modern has never
even been seen in
these parts. Post
modern is next tho.
After my appointment
with Doctor Death.
He said, reinvent
yourself please, quick
before a slight breeze
blows you away.

Becoming City

 

 

 Becoming City

What we recognize in the
other… that search. Active
mirroring. But not under
pressure of success. Get
away from philosophy. New
mind of empty forms that
need nothing. Love was
here, love will be here,
I am useful. I tripped
once and fell. Bruised
my ego. The world sighed.
The story never ends.
The ocean ends and the
land begins. The moon
rises. The city dies.
Could I say less?

5 places at once would be
enough. Can it happen
and the money flows?
Fighting uphill, having
nothing but grit. Impressing
no one but the children,
they see me. Until, until.
Until until. No more
children, they’ve grown up.
Without words by our side.
Just pictures, the media
flowers, the endless
dreaming and flying
at night. What did
we deserve? The gifts.
The movies. Popcorn.
Traditions of bright light.

Single sentences fall
into longer ones. Blank
verse is over. Swimming
pools, sand, glare,
hanging onto my toothbrush
I drove off for morning
coffee at Wawa.
Everybody said hello
in that atmosphere.
But I could barely.
Not the war again.
Paying for coffee,
staring into space,
the Virgin Mary
over my shoulder.

A slow and old jazz
song like Autumn Leaves.
My father said I revealed
his secret at the Quaker
meeting. It took awhile.
I said I’d never learned
to speak in meeting.
Change 'learned' to ‘learning’.
Always learning, sometimes
glimpsing the light,
a brief flash in
the pan, the world
sideways. My neck
pain recedes, you’ve
got such karma

always. Got such karma,
dribbled jeans. The circle.
Fix the circle, win the
war, turn off the light,
I’ll leave the light on
for you. Looking for
my Grandfather I fell
into a black hole,
spun like a washing
machine, only my
friends saw me so
I went back to
Philadelphia. Not
a connector, a builder,
a repairman, a blank.

Which is to say
less than a man,
a man is never
complete when it
sounds like thunder
and its an airplane.
Peter Pan knew what
blue is. A certain
torture of the gut,
someone who says why
to their family while
listening to concertos,
and humming along.
Does it all happen
at once, if one has

the time for it?
Put a kettle on it.
Making postmodern art
out of lemons, it
feels good. With
you by my side.
That’s love and co-
commitment. Going
down the long hall.

Poems Are Transcendent

 Poems Are Transcendent
like all art but perhaps more so since the words
come from that other place, so far away
and yet so near. I see us all as floating ghosts
beside our bodies as we move along, our fingers
only barely on the trigger, a wisp of cloud entwining.
It depends on what one reads or talks about of course
but the pulse could take you anywhere
or so many places at once and thus harmony in music
or unharmony, as the case may be. The wisp knows,
I see now, so why make fun of it, or even be too serious,
the wispy cloud reaches the sky, evaporates madly,
or rains back down. It goes in rivulets down inside
the earth and heats up. This is joy,
the Earth magma molten core.

The soul is wispy
and wouldn’t altogether be happy about that
if it had a mouth to frown or smile. But it seems
to infiltrate and tell secrets like dreams in backwards
upside down words. Words that stand alone and fall
over into a heap of cookie crumbs, the sprinkles
standing out in my view colorfully.

There’s an entrance
to a cave and the ghost stands there alone
glowing to themself. It can see inside the handprints.
It can see outside the wide blue sky and the setting sun.
“Further in,” it mutters, “further in!”
The mutters chant across the known universe.
“I’m almost broken” it thinks passively.
“But these are just words.”

Introducing the Ruminator

     Older age welcomes me with open arms to a deathly silence. Probably since I’m ruminating so much. You are what you eat, after all. thus the Patchen. Too bad I can’t write short stories. Why not? Don’t know. Anyway, the ants are back, and etc. Everywhere, on my favorite chairs, the old man chairs. It never stops, in other words. Sell the house, get the money and it doesn’t stop. Room to breathe.

I should be glad, is the burden lifted a little bit, as compared to a few years ago? Or am I gloomier, less able to connect? Seems a worthy way to look at shit, everybody perhaps carrying a burden, the neurosis of Freud, not shame per se, but an inability to sync perfectly with the world, a maladjustment, a character flaw. Lacan’s language barrier hitting each person differently at the mirror stage and we’re all just trying to fit in, square pegs in the round hole of the Real.
This hits me pretty strongly. Regimes of language and silence. In which work, emo or otherwise, stands out in sharp relief, for those who are woke.



Such that our paths seem to go in and out of silence in rhythmic ways. Silence and Death go hand in hand. Speaking into the void can only go on for so long. Eventually it turns into an epic. A life story, even generational. The knowledge that it may be only one word or perhaps one sentence that changes the course of things. Which of course one may not notice because we wouldn’t know how things would have been. Which is all a realization some use to their vast advantage leaving ethics way behind. For most of us cooperation only makes sense in the smaller scale of things, in the short term. In the longer term, cooperation and the deeper communication required to overcome our natural secrecy that we hold out to the stranger like a talisman (a crucifix?), these two methodologies go hand in hand and one sparks the other. One tends to decide that one must find the magic words to commence the mutual sparking. A poetry must occur, if one can find the right moment or sentiment, or both perhaps most of all. One enters a timeless zone in this process. A smile-less zone. Continuous time drifts off in its own direction and dis-continuous time, of a lunar nature of course, sails in on a cross breeze. The weather becomes a looming element. The tides are certain we do know that. But the tides of what?

USA Crazier

 

    USA Crazier
and it isn’t any use
being against anything!
but fill it in,
fill it in, that’s it.
The worker has work
to do, that’s it.
The musician has music
to make, that’s all,
the actor has acts
to create from their own blood.

If I keep something by my side
for long enough it may wear off
on me, the blood may change.
I can forget coffee,
forget the habits of the past.
The one is nearby,
the vocal one.
I knew I’d find something
to say, to have said
already. Am I ready?

The American family knows but forgets,
just by osmosis knows but
forgets unless they weep
or pray, and acts to
create are what’s new.
I think I’ve heard
that said, a non dream
state in a crystal ball
that floats in from
another room in a place
where the family
has lived for a long time.
The crystal ball!
The crystal ball,
I knew but I
wasn’t paying attention.

His loneliness.

Her childlike loneliness.

Special, you’re always
special. When you’re
growing up, you don’t know
but you do feel it and
then later, in the repetition
things can appear, in the voices
of tomorrow, unknown,
American things.
    - Not the right stuff
    or the wrong stuff.
    Loneliness for the 20th Century.
    (Wouldn’t you like to do that
    all over again, create a different
    ending?)

The Guillotine

 

     Awaken at 3 am, can’t sleep. As if so much more happened with the notary arriving yesterday right when I’d awakened from a morning nap! I’d gotten up and was typing into the journal about a tai chi taoist philosophy of life and I heard a soft knock. Which I ignored. then hearing it again. And then one more time, I’m reading the Rexroth to see if I can understand something in it. So I realize by then somebody is gently for real. Its not an Amazon driver. So I go down and peeking out I remember its the notary. Like oh it’s THAT day! I apologize and he’s very nice, a round placid white guy, walking softly and saying what a nice house. I say oh yes the woodwork is really great here. And then its signing, quickly, on the dining room table. Even before I can remember my glasses when I go to get my ID. Sign here and here, date this, and I notice he doesn’t know the date which I do because it was Juneteenth yesterday. And by now, two days from Juneteenth I’m thinking how much were those signings, of this that and the other, and oh by the way they’d prefer not to wire the money but a certified check the next day, which was unexpected but I suppose understandable, something could go wrong from my end and they probably want certainty and control of all the details, what did I see in that Swedish crime series last night, a quote from Schiller about details - and then the abyss! They glossed over it pretty quickly but I see details of the subtitles on the screen in my mind’s eye, a few words, and the name Schiller, with a C? And each time I sign my name it’s getting harder and I’m spacing and messing up the D in the middle, which I remember when I started putting it in there. Probably my twenties, I felt like I was putting a hole into the middle of my name and I wasn’t sure why I was doing that. Hugh D Wattles, plus its so long, HughDWattles… I’d rather gloss over the whole damn thing like I’ve seen some people do, a scribble that spluges into a line with maybe a crossed t somewhere to come back to like a flourish. But anyways, I just concentrate and push through it, this signing, and by now I’m thinking, thats what they, someone, wants you to feel and think (the big Other, undoubtedly) like its a performance of self, whilst they are stealing your life from you, your piece of the rock. I say oh my god I can’t wait to get rid of that home equity loan and if the nice fellow who compliments me on the beautiful house has a couple of brain cells knocking around in there he probably sees that I’m some dumb tattooed ex-hippie who smoked too much back in the day and their empire expands while mine contracts. Big numbers win over little numbers anyday. Yang takes yin, absolutely. Until. And something about how I thank him again as he leaves for coming all the way into the city and then shut the door and lock it while he’s gently striding down the stairs.

I’d like to say that there IS and should be something about intelligence to be recognized. That it should be and could be possible to become smarter about things, and see the larger picture in a more constant way, as if having a third eye which could do that for you. If you can just turn it on, without even talking about it. But probably it actually takes others with whom one can talk about this mythical larger picture. This unfocused and variable future where anything could go in any direction, it vaguely seems.
But one thing I do think is that property in these east coast cities will stay popular and those who can own with the long run in mind, well they've got the power. People are going to have to move out of the climate danger zones, displacement will occur. And as we saw with the universities shutting down pro-Palestine occupations, such as the University of Pennsylvania, only a few blocks from here, we know where the power lies. The right wing is crushing the minimal freedoms of speech that are left in higher education. And with Godard closing, and also the University of the Arts, a 150 year old institution for artists in downtown Philly. It ain’t cheap to live down there any more.
We switched up the car for my truck, parking it in the garage we rent from the hard working Chinese guy who owns the student rental house on the corner. Someone was busting windows on cars on our block, up to 8 in one night, and not stealing anything. The word was that it was radicals, protesting the Gaza genocide in our bourgeoisie neighborhood. Now my truck is on the street, with it's tinted windows from that white landscaper guy from up in Roxborough. I took the sticker off of it that said titties and guns or some such. Left the squirrel nut sticker on, added a Dump Trump sticker, bright red.

Its summer solstice today. Something to celebrate. The sun showers love on the entire earth, even if it is a heat wave.

Red Shoes, Click Twice

 

       The other side of the mountain.
It seemed so far I didn’t notice
the uphill at all I floated and
dreamed of flying. I read Neruda
but was it true? I went to see
the national poet, Ginsberg, and
he sang a ditty so pretty. I
joined up with the poets at
Bacchanal and sang in tune
with similar glee. Drank and
wrote, late at night, seriously.
Chased after love but I’d say,
ignorantly, I didn’t know
I didn’t know so innocently.
    No one had died for me I
suppose is the only answer I can
see, left this world before they spoke,
left it upside down and inside out,
left if green and red, black and white,
the colors barely exist, the morning
birds don’t sing or warble, or roll,
scat singing, trances of life in life,
traces of love in life, a single ant
crossed the countertop and there’s
nothing that can be done about it.
    Banal, I don’t relate to other
others well, I emanate mysteriously
to myself as if floating down
the other side, it’s all been my
fault or no one’s fault, looking
back, impossible to say for sure,
and now dawn comes early and
always fake even, unnameable,
could it all be one infinitely large
face reproduced from 100,000 BC or
180,000 BC, the intent of the first
tribe of people, their heart burning
sadly & joyfully, has taken over this
world, buildings everywhere except
the last tendrils of the Amazonian or
deserted solo mountains somewhere?
How would I know anything at all in
comparison, ruined by poetry at
twenty one tender years of age?
Devastated now by wanting to be
in the dream world, one toe at least,
forever. I’ve almost made it, I think.
I may have found my red shoes,
click twice, click twice, didn’t
the lovely wise Goddess say something
along those lines? And Humpty Dumpty
Hugh doesn’t need no damned
King’s horses or King’s men I shout
uselessly against the winds of time!
Please, I beg, I’m rolling terribly
down the other side of the mountain,
I never said goodbye, how could I
be leaving, so suddenly, now is now,
the Maker is there in that pit of me!
    Hello my Maker, I’m trying
to be taken, I want to awaken,
this is so fake there’s no way
around it, the sound of it, the round
to it, I intuit the ancient Druids
touched it too, any folks with fingers
lingered there, singing there, squared
in blaring staring faring onwards,
rock n roll will save your soul and
make you whole! ____________!
    And so I appear like a ghost
to others… from the past not current,
no word will ever make sense, echoing
from a lost day when I was erased
in horror, erased in torture. Did
I give myself up or was the soul
accidentally taken into the wordless
void, pushed and shoved, kicked
screaming and weeping? Stared
into a corner where upon the onlookers
gaped, I know, passers by…
strangers… drifters… only
the unhoused really saw me go
and perhaps the Black Orpheus
but he never apologized, why should
he? standing next to the Maker
as he does, so proud he’ll never
know, or he would’ve shown up
in someone else’s eyes if I
only could have seen it before
I shut my eyes. Radu Jude
may have seen it tho, I admit.
I’m full of faults and Quicken-less,
I lose track of the weight of money
so easily.

        Radu Jude
        GOOD.

        Me bad…

On reading an interview with Alice Notley and gaining deeper insight as to the purpose of poetry…

Revenge of the Smashed Green

Self melting no
name making, boom
faking not liking,
loving crushing,
dwindle tops.
Ok was the word.
When I went in
everything stopped but
that’s OK, allright.

The philosopher said
there is no why, but
I said there’s hunger
for electricity, or a force
of nature.

Bring lettuce, bring
dozens of drinks, let go
of the ants they are so
small, out of sight
mostly. But then again
they return with thoughts
of their own.

Sunsets and skyscrapers.
Death in Gaza and consciousness
knows it. The da da daddy
of us all, the Mama
swinging in for a closer look.
 

Rushing Through

    Want to rush through this journal,
(and finish this book) since the pages are so narrow
and short and I always seem to want the option
to write wide. Coffee is so good, but not the answer
to laying in bed, at 4 am with the ideation gun
creeping around nearby. Because I have nothing
to say. Until I start. Then everything. Then
splinters. Goodbyes. Goodbyes to failures.
Getting ready for dawn and somebody, some
long lost face. Not the apocalypse. Not this instant.
Just loneliness smoothed out into a cakey skin
around my finger, a bandaid, a word, a drip.
A scent of the first bird of a spring morning
through a cracked open window.

Recently the crows have been inventing new words,
new phrases. Impossible to describe, you have to be there,
hearing this one crow yesterday morning as I walked to
the garage, repeating this phrase:
ka keea
ka keea
ka keea

ka keea…

Can I wish for peace around the entire world today?
Why not? Even if I’m not spiritual most of the time.
Could all words be prayers thrown out against the ideation gun,
even cursing, especially cursing, and that 4 am gun
is actually a last remnant of the Dreaded God
of yore, the God you weren’t supposed to say his (its?) name.
You were supposed to fear this God. Be humble etc.
But this God has a half life like I don’t believe. If
God is dead for Nietsche, my God is half dead and I’m praying
through music and dah dah words for some Goddess I think,
like Odysseus’s Athena, the wise one, -actually she comes
and goes, and leaves him on Calypso’s island for seven years,
where he gets too much sex, -pleasure activism.

Like Oscar Wilde said, more or less, all things in good
measure, even abstinence. I’d put this into a little chapbook
I think and hand it out at our band’s shows, if I had more
courage, like the crow doesn’t even know. Guess
I’m trying to think of pick up lines for strangers,
I could use a new friend instead of doing my taxes.