To Kings

Whatever your fortune may be

Time will judge the judges

And we will rebel.

Lines from Club Charles

i. again

You can read if you want you have read it before.

The future comes at us

a pink fireball with limitless horsepower.

Every step into the future

platitude gimmick bluster and hoax

find tragedy with an endless equation of sequels.

You follow the policy like herrings shimmering

in the six dimensions of their one decision

to enter the gape of the whale.

It's starting to happen it could be happening now.

ii. editor's blues

All messages appear red bold and speeding.

Never read anything twice and you will understand

the way things got this way.

Every day after day

keeps going keeps switching on its on

switches keeps switching off its off, its

squaring of the squaring up

the supersupreme that manifests the mean.

Ever felt yourself the agent

of an Almighty Buffoon?

Ridden like a fly-by-virus

a continent by plates

a nature underneath

with secret interests not your own?

Five hours behind myself

the days end up in the sky.

I am burnt steak

raw inside.

Never read anything twice and you will understand.

iii. cipher

Dissatisfaction with what it is: O original world

with my hands forked in your soft sides

I am lines on the bathroom wall

phone numbers to paradise

a demolition derby of colliding ink

marked up when people are laughing

and you can't remember your name.

Don't look too deeply the numbers have changed.

iv. working for the philistines

Where to from here Captain Hazelwood?

When I want to be remembered, I think

It's tacky to last

like plastic bags

ragged-wrapped

around the broken autumn limbs.

I could get past some of my limitations

if I could just get past the rest of them.

But the insane attract the insane

and you learn

you're insane.

Turned upside down in a hijacked plane of missionaries, trailer trash, 70's burnouts,

tattoo-parlor confederates, Black Panther chefs, corporate reps, philosophy breakaways, sect survivors, grinning bankers,

                              government workers

                                                                 going bonkers.

                                                                                           Whatever comes next I'm not ready don't push me.

I'm hanging by a thread, yes, but I’m hanging

by the strongest thread in the world.

v. cancer moon

Strange world out everywhere

hopelessly in total control.

Bacon by the overpass curling thru windows

and people get evermore starry eyed.

Extraordinary bullshit is upon us.

Look through the windows of cars at their standstill

Caligulas of human rights braiding death on the interstate

the wear and tear real as the tears

forced out by the 5 p.m. glare.

I’ll light my fires 
for the rush of highways 
and massive architecture

floundering in antimatter

broken records made to last

dust motes snowing in projector rays.

vi. ecstasy in the boardroom

So many loopholes, so little time.

The numbers begin to take meaning.

Bothered by the facts, caffeine-free headaches, the arctic sugarcube:

Good morning. It’s 10:30 in the United States. 
But I could be anywhere

more or less unstable on those

tectonic plates of intercontinental time—

neurons limp as boiled sage

the sphere diluted to experience of optics

quondam possibilities resurgent again

scented of chicken-fried woodsmoke

nailpolish-colored construction

cones, tail lights lost

the summer evenings

original elements grow appetites

meet, plead, and wait

to be devoured.

Having heaven now

I must make peace with hell

and cancelled sitcoms.

You future kids

don’t hate me because I’m serious.

I tried to be an organ I’m a cell

devoted to its process.

I don't dream much anymore

but when I dream

we’re Easter egg hunting on Mount Vesuvius.

vii. butane sundown

Without speaking you know what I feel

in the air and dancing

oases forming and unforming

umbrellas in the rain

begetting operas in the wind

Come off the interstate, sunset graded

on the windows of grand hotels

Hyundais racing through the streets of hit and run

everyone exhausted by their own interpretation

of the language makes no sense.

Even with a fantastic suntan

one day you'll roam the twilight construction

turning into chalk

brain sharp as cracked crystal

panic in your roller coaster eyes

discovered by the wrong people and speechless

cut from your no-answer's-good-enough-for-me

puppymill of corporate cluster#*&*<#)!@#%

as the night goes gorgeous

shades of teal

trademarked in Bora Bora

by outlaw bastard patriot friends

viii. thinking of sunday

Ever get that feeling?

Like an orgasm in the brain

on country morning drives

the spears of joy come flying in.

I think Let spasms of light

through the trees at high speeds

defrag my deep memories,

till the impacted mind

for something it can celebrate

unqualified.

I so want to be

projected away from emergencies

far from the feral cats howling under my window

move forward again to that cliff in the sky

where it snows in the sun

recalibrate all the senses and when it's done

the perfect succession of images

let unlock the orb

let flow the eternal caramel of satisfaction.

ix. autodidact

Another attosecond another metamorphosis

another Russian roulette of jelly beans.

Gather in stimuli--

fake ecstasies and press conference meltdowns.

Life after excitement keeps secreting new products:

170,000,000 pages or more

of interactive global index fantasies

wacko textile designs,

sunshine you'd better love.

Omnipotent terror negates every fear.

Flip through any magazine:

You can feel the crashing planes 
turning sculpture into sculpture

events unfolding the way lava sets as it cools

dirty pictures of sleeping canyons,

computer-modeling images,

the shaved rock of Appalachian highways

glossy shots of isoscelean hair

the 30,000 years it takes the sun

to send its love this way

with a brightness blind as the cave lizard

groping for footholds in frozen streams.

I never could see

what was right in front of me.

My wayward learning maybe

confounds the few remaining

who take our kind to be a gem atop the kingdoms--

Human in the sense still propounded

by rarefied nuns, banjo troubadors

neocons on safari.

But I know what a diamond's worth

to the pressures of the universe

cuz I am just an object of divine consumption

a squid sprawled on the cutting board

soon to be calamari.

x. summer slaughter

Gargantuan withered midsummer leaves

wilder than despots after midnight

never learn to pace the sun

spread quickly, die slowly

so what that's that.

Disintegrating infrastructure grows on you.

Ivy on the chain link

grows on you.

And what makes any sense

gets more and more specific to the year

to poor outdating policies

distant students will never understand

designed to crumble like a warehouse in the rain

or cigarettes burning to the heart

of what can we escape with?

I do believe we are destined for je ne sais quois

saved for some reason or chance which-is-which

in a flash of paper whispers

by starving children jealous of our crimes.

I said no more runnin’ as I ran

said how I hate the nick of time!

An indistinguished garden 
joins the underbrush.

xi. conference calls

White walls white walls.

The blank walls where everything’s possible nothing is likely.

The white walls of Insuperable Tedium—

majestic in the immense lack of promise

erotic in the lack of imagination

distracting in the desire to meld

beginning and end like the clock stuck at noon

on the white walls white walls

unchanging as the voice of instructional films

somnolent in the effort to interest us

                             in something else

continual as the ringing of telephones

flat as the plaster and concrete

and loved like the fifteen-day work week.

White walls white walls,

today I found my hands colliding.

Today I wondered

What am I applauding?

White walls White walls

When does the color come?

xii. la palma

Long wild year

sure to disappoint

everything except reflections

rigging truth to be what else:

Heavy days, away with words.

Still in the August daze

limbs overreaching their interest

for a taste of something 

more than allowed--

tests inconclusive

state secrets stolen

stocks on the rise

the bubble goes pop….

We all face La Palma.

If it comes if it doesn't

like the worst kinds of wars--

the ones we don't know we are fighting.

xiii. bizarro

Pretty sure we are not doing

the ordinary life

Why not more

extraordinary push?

Life impels unjustified

action to make the best of.

A moment dawns mid-33.

The time is free

beyond the orbit.

Come with me.

I praised the herbivores--

mad bucks who broke the mouths of wolves and leopards
praised the Zulu against impossible odds;

praised conquistador-in-shell

sent to circumnavigate

his shadow carousel

lay from his hands the expansion

of infinite matter and sound

reach past the hypergiants

knowing nothing but next

and doing what comes

to his immediate mind.

The blood on his hands is a shame.

And yet among the dead

you know his name

the supertraitor

equal in all betrayals.

I walk in the way of extremely rare men

though something less would suit me.

I praise the herbivores

but the carnivores win.

Til the herbivores win.

Til the carnivores win.

Killing me kills you

as always.

This is the way of revolutions

or at least

dead revolutionaries.

xiv. nude on the ledge

62 trillion in the red

the sun’s angel face

a passing fad

I saw words in the wrong

places, curves in the stitching

L-O-V in the Braille

of old adobe

snakes in the talons

crossing the freeway

some kind of hieroglyph

on which I was stuck

sunbathing nude on San Francisco

TAXI in the wind

as mirrors caught my beast

in every dimension.

Liberty’s invisibility today.

Liberty is a tan ass

no word from Washington or NYC.

But because I was

and the other side of the story

always made me less brazen

I listened to my enemies converse

and saw the limits of the universe

helpless as a baby

frisked by security

in permanent emergency

and decided to do something but grieve.

Because I was

middleamerica as a crying cheerleader

no rocketfire ministry argument stalemate

no logistics or TV timeout

would pause the march

toward quiet days we wanted loud

and louder.

Consumer piano, play over me.

One option only

confronts my day:

children laughing English, Spanglish, Japanese, Hello

canceling to traffic moving

toward 61 trillion in the red below.

I rose. The sun set. I moved.

xv. the big pass

Stardown, metadata cries

microtime, our destiny.

Taste the derision:
the possible is not impossible

only difficult

beyond our means--

presidential in their limitation

confined to sets of unwinning options

anyone can see.

The triptych of is was WILL BE 

creation endless 

in its provocations

as its modes of exit:

sexual obliteration, orgasm by fire

too many people to love

burning through time

like invasive species chewing mud

left by appetites

defaulting Earth to hollow rind

beneath the doveburst of moon concerned

by all those parasites.

Liberated, I would close my eyes and drive

the wind and white lights evolving me home

to flowers and sex in the median strand

roadkill twitching in the margins

of the mind--eternal burning

not in hell, but in myself--

making fire of my inner cities.

And to burn is beautiful. Just watch the flames.

Observe the drama. Hold tight the hands. 

Feel deep the air

heavy as a hurricane, smelling of fish 

and chemicals and mysterious plumes

so sweet somehow as my street

when blooming rose

and honeysuckle meet 

among the diesel fumes.

One deep look into the purple clouds--

the August anycolored flesh of sky--

it is the blush that sails me

down the long long road

toward the whirlpool I could die

to save myself from the inferno

of what's true.

Stardown. Metadata. Microtime. Our destiny.

One long bend with a beautiful view.

What waylays you?

xvi. let’s rock

As the mood turns ugly--

and it will turn ugly

whatever your empire--

tequila with gatorade

and sardines and walnuts

will nourish the nights

fuzzing around by the excommuniques

trying not to get devoured

one hour closer

to the virtual burqa

of willful stupidity

self-selected inequality

and actions chimpanzee.

Fate opens weird

wild doors on us, man. Days

so heavily encrypted

to read along the patterns

makes a mockery of nature

increasingly itself, a word

mipselled

precious like time 

when it's running out

vicious like love

when too much exists

all at once

in one place.

Precious vicious always the same

the language has butterflied

to museum conversation

auditorium discussion

foyer rumor

airwave hearsay

politician in the morning.

The mood turns ugly.

Simplicity is rich.

Lightning is at play.

Welcome to the polygraph you cannot pass.

Every word you speak is true.

xvii. mach 9

Pregnancy. Thunderstorms. Postfinancial coronaries.

The days are ferns unfolding in a crystal-granite sea.

Alone in the city's erotic enormity--

a tsunami of architecture

encounters a tsunami of fog. High mist

plays tricks, swells the buildings

like breasts under gauze.

From such overestimations

I deduct my dreams and voila

reality downs

a fearsome, wounded bird:

slanders and promises in front-page ink

young ladies ordering birth control loudly

bad kids on bikes                

green shade.

Voila, monsters:

A tsunami of architecture

encounters a tsunami of fog.

Pretentious, ignorant, but self-aware
I don't lie.
                 

I see angels with orchid wings in the sky.

Black Buildings

The sky was dull black as a chalkboard.

But the buildings were brilliant.

From a bridge miles away

the city in sequins rose.

The sky was dull black as a chalkboard.

I dreamed I saw a friend

signal to me from the shoreline.

He was ready for a tour.

I was going into an oven of an underworld.

But the buildings were brilliant.

Hunger sucked my ribs in the morning.

All was starch black as a chalkboard,

but the buildings were brilliant.

Over the sidewalk everything blends—

gunshots and laughter and trains of reasoning.

Stray cats were dying in the alleys.

Rabid dogs descended,

and so I pitied tortured torturers

and supplicants alike.

My face collected pasted moths.

I walked around in search of a mirage.

I dreamed I saw a friend

waving to me from a window.

He was fixing hot food and preparing my bed.

Dawn arrived without a sun.

Still there was no light in the furnace of this place.

But the buildings were brilliant.

The buildings were brilliant.

Visions

Looking into it

like a shipwreck through stingrays

I catch a glimpse in the reef.

Looking into it

from a mountain through the clouds

I see a sand temple with green windows

defy the avalanche.

Looking at it

through a flurry of comets

of candy-coated planets

I feel my sympathy away.

O the delirium

in my penthouse aquarium.

The Shaman

Rich with heaven and hell

bones engraved by history’s

endless column of gray misty pain

skin like a Great War battlefield

nacreous skull tall

and filled with stained glass windows

light warming 
the brain of his butterfly through

stomach full of taste buds

his head a seamless aigrette

bars of ice in his throat

holding the fire within

and blood the flavor of cherry

He could confuse the laws of karma.

Could play the chords correctly incorrect

earn a robber peace

or twist justice out of lies

and monsters with static for a face.

Smarter than the elders and dumb

to the universe

badly weakened, barely able to breathe

unable to procreate.

Language did not restrict him.

Thoughts did not govern him.

Dreams did not stop.

He came this way one time.

I invited him in for gumbo and whiskey.

He left and now all is well.