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