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
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
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
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.
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 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.
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
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 don't lie.
I see
angels with orchid wings in the sky.
