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.

Babies of Amerka

 

 Over & Out, Under & Around

3/14

    Come out young babies of Amerka,
young men in particular,
murky weather will end,
sunlight of spring, mud emerges,
worms wriggle, bricks laugh,
stones and concrete mercy wear,
to fly over apocalyptic nonsense,
even you can be an immigrant
again.

    Bring under the hands of Amerka
nothing you haven’t seen before,
repurposed and fallen, drifting,
weeping single lines of words,
the future is nothing but all
braveness and courage,
the high winds come from other
lands, these people are gently living
too.

    I know I don’t know and probably never
will know a thing in Amerka, my
father was the one who went
from coast to coast, my mother
unseen, following behind, hand in
hand for a while, the song
moving to her lips and belly,
the kiss moving then to another,
who passed.

    Chant about death then in lousy
Amerka, a great eraser of memory
and memorial, mothers who weep alone
from eeryies high, concrete boxes,
bones for a nest, wrinkles slip,
eyes glare and stare between
lifting screens, timeless colors,
blood fullness, what voice!
cha cha cha!

    Only in the 60’s was white Amerka revealed
and fit again, semblances of the demos,
muscle and sex true passion, since then,
understandings have faded, lain
still as cliffs, there are no cliffs
in Amerka to fall over, we
need the right cliff and not
the stupid Golden Gate, now
suicide proofed, Death Don’t Have
Amerka chanting yet.

    Got no excuses except the deep freeze
was injected, a poison below the belt,
a scream of agonized twisting wind,
Amerka bombs Hiroshima again and
again, teach you all what the eye
on the pyramid can do,
any leafless moment of high summer,
my dream catcher is left flying tho,
an Osprey.

    The Osprey I saw soaring wide above
a pond damned by an ancient factory
in Worcester Mass, an abandoned mini golf
course next door and a Walmart
across the street from my Mother’s
secret safe house for womyn, but
my brother broke in that evening
drunk and the tears flowed for
Mom, known as Jay, instead of Goddess
stories.

    I didn’t know anything til recently,
these stories that never end & raise the hair,
but sometimes nightmares I wish I had, a roar
of Occupy’s Bear killing the Bull
on Wall Street, Main Street Amerka,
self hate, too late, our fate, dream
state, “Billy Boy, Did You know?” as I
stare blankly as slate under felt, a pool
table.

    And ping pong Chinese tai chi civilized
communist drivel, Fan Shen, family meetings,
egg drop soup humpty dumpty visions,
I know I’m a werewolf now in
Amerka’s foul shit filled night, Trump
fears me but can’t see me yet, even
as he rides Custer’s horse to D.C.,
a marvelous ending isn’t it,
the war drums beating all the while
for alcoholic Amerkans telling another
story.

    Studio 54 gentrified solidified,
ambushed, our own Clark Park in
West Philly drained as the 5,000 unit
buildingness, Ayn Ran’s toilet goes up,
my first girl friend went to a woke
school underneath there in a Victorian
3 story twin with Disco Duck, an early
famed graffiti artist of subway tunnels,
the flashing of his name under reaching-
over-lights, a trolley ride.

    I memorialize so many since then
Amerka, Wino and his ‘I Hate Art That
Hangs In Museums' and for 'Those Who Are
Conscious' From 52nd St second floor Aschak,
thanks be for any grace at all
as I take one more breath, round the corner
from Wheels of Soul’s one percenters,
he got shot and torn away but I ran
into gentle eyes tending bar there,
mother of Bogg’s daughter and son
who died in my home so I testified
of character.
    
    Amerka’s character dream, Move’s
character dream, the KKK is in the cities
too we know, ashes raising across the
Rainbow, guns melting, words hoping
singing rapping, One Love Amerka
Marley his last tour Houston Hall opening
spring narcissus daffodils in our front yard
a wild flower meadow. Noise in Amerka.
One saxophone on a roof on
49th St.

    Over and out! that trucker’s CB handle
I was hitching a ride on 70 east from under
a bridge going home tho I didn’t know it
a murmur saying Hate Has No Home Here,
all anger has no home, any bullet is
a weeping, a siren across
a turtle’s island, row homes, garbage
collectors, singers, a balcony, arms
are pointing, he had a dream, my parents
in that throng of joy.

    Wash me in the river, or whatever
words suit you Amerka, children of
darkness know even more than the Sun
can say on it’s long journey into what
promises can be made and perhaps
fulfilled, there’s still time, hail Mary
and William Penn’s shout of Who Cares!?!
from atop my City Hall, a courtyard
of Jesus’s and Jesus’s babies always
crying.

    but not weeping yet, the difference being
dreams turn to visions in the sweaty water
of those singular tears and visions see
only God and Goddess and the Great Spirit
who is wise beyond measure, democracy
without leisure, cringing, singing
tattooing on souls that have walked these
sidewalks and stoop sitting alone, learning
your name is not enough, Big Mike,
I’ll always remember our chicken dinner on
Budd St.

    And miss Rose with roses in her
front yard, she wanted to sell me her home
when she died but I moved too soon to
a bigger house, too big, now rotting
and empty, I’m dragging books and
my Grandma Margaret’s letters from
the year my mother was born, I’ll read
them late tonight, seed them into a
spring time field long overgrown and
understood.

    Call Eugene today, go to Verizon,
turn off the gas on Chestnut St, the woods
replenish like unstoppable moss the rocky
beachless Maine coast with the cutest
lighthouse, Russian invades again we know
in movies being filmed, war porn,
war torn, I Dream Of Jeanie with the light
brown hair, she twinkles her nose and
the wind blows.

 strangely this appeared out of nowhere as I did some typo in the middle of transcribing this poem from my journal to here, larger font and all. It’s actually the name of a book by Byung-Chul Han:
The Disappearance of Rituals
 Which raises up the paranoia of interactings in the digital dream world from which I’m hoping that becoming a chanter of poetry might protect me. Aha, got it, must have been the last thing I copied onto the clip board yesterday. I’d like to get his key book (evidently) called ‘The Burnout Society’, because I certainly feel burned out.

Mani-Fest-Toes

 Mani-Fest-Tivals of Manifestos

my manifesto today kind of like a psychological profile of me and how I connect with all of the world, the universe:

What is the music of rebirth? (against capitalism which has less rebirth than death in its influences… witness ‘Deaths of Despair’ today)
The musical modes? Maybe that could be the goal…
The feeling that:
a - We are each other’s life coaches, wether we want to be or not, since we have no one else to be like, to observe thriving nature or diminishing nature of… this is friendship, my first actual experience/feeling out in the world. After high school: So a withdrawal from the ‘desires’ of society and only a few friends. No guidance, free, and in contrast to the ideal, not great outcomes.
b - In 1800 the vast majority of people lived their entire lives inside a 30 mile circle.
b1 - go back and find all my ancestors of 1800. Those are my roots, draw circles around those people 30 miles wide. Any roots there, my roots there. Ancient ground. Not that I ‘own’ anything, they might own me, who knows, the wind and the rain are part of these circles.
X - media influence is everything in contrast to 1800.
C4 - addiction & mental health (as always) make up 90% of life, the organization of which… Powers that be organize all availability of Substances of life… (If one eats wheat all the time, one is addicted to wheat.) The image of red pill/blue pill/Society of the Spectacle. Subconscious world is suppressed by conscious and conscious is suppresssed by ideology of …. Kapitall (more than we know, haha)
M29 ~ the ‘worker’ (Federici’s worker: all work is ‘reproductive work’) is most suppressed of all … How…
z3*@ - how anarchists (freedom of self/balanced society) need Marx most of all, a ‘how to think’ of ideas…
“IAM - the 20th century schizoid man” song by King Crimson, overrun with media influences, lost my roots, embrace the multiple…
AAAAAAAAA - in other words, the primary concern for each and all people should be (me in life coach voice, MHO) should be the development of ‘healthy culture’, which naturally will always contain a component of change or ‘revolution/evolution/defense and BALANCE…..
OOOOOOOOO - PERSONAL manifestos are required to navigate the modern world, in order to establish and maintain this healthy culture in the face of certain definitive monotheist apocalypse/culturcide. All apocalypses are suicide by DEATH cultures, like black holes pulling all light in and only some escapes momentarily, everybody sitting around that campfire going “ooooooh, how beautiful!!!!” (Trump is a black hole… a grabby Midas…).
OOOOOzzzzeeee - The uzi from Kapitalist Kulture will incapacitate…(but still we have to have money, enough.. (when is enough?))