(older poems #1)

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extreme and long-standing


I live for the artist at the bottom of the ocean.
I long for that silence.


Her cup can't run over.
She no longer names/signs 
her own "vessels."
Some thin flaking layover
between her and "eternity."
Her "private" love won't discriminate
nor will it satisfy anyone 
except with what they 
already "p o s s e s s" 
in seed form
for "themselves."

And yet, predictably, "I", 
still as thirsty and unwashed as ever,
gently dip my own knotted lips 
into the sink after failing, 
times without number, 
to crack open 
the 
following 
sea
floor
style
uni-
verse:

[in process, forthcoming, from oblivion's presses]

smudged and anonymous glass-
ungrateful, unseeing, disgusted, impatient-
for a certain period of time,
much like her,
I 
too 
was 
denied 
isolation.

And the ways and means I attempted 
to "work with" that 
not-so-minor affair
became my pathetic first book
of near-unpublished 
fragments, diagrams, and digressions
and the comic author's 
photo and fun biological pair-a-graph.
(Thankfully, these items
are no longer
seen or read
as terribly 
relevant.)


I live for the ocean at the bottom of the artist.
I believe I would die for that silence.


........................................................................



Nathalie, dearest, 
I write you in anguish-
(peculiar sensation, that!)
I am afraid for my health,
my well-being, my life,
my tumbleweed-style salvation-
youprobablyknowbetterthananyone 
that I have not the respect
for money or masters or death
as becomes a man of my age,
and not nearly enough scorn
for the "truth" and other such
matters ephemeral that
have ways of stringing one up
well before one has tasted
ofboththesugarandbitter.

I read your little notes 
to be "healed,"
ifthatmakesyoufeelanybetter.
I lay out my ashpile "heart" 
foryoutoexamineorignoreasyouchoose.
Makes no actual difference
because I pretty much 
continue to rot either way!

I am sinking and swallowing,
losing track, losing interest,
making lists of mistakes, misconceptions,
that I had back in "everyday life"-
and it's just coming out now
that never did I really comprehend earth,
never did I realize what had importance
back there in the valley, 
never did I come
to know "myself "
or any tangible "other."

Nat, put your hand over the light, please,
lay your scissors alongside my throat,
dangle your hair upon my eyes,
pressyourswollenfingertomylips.


............................................................



hypergraphia


Tonight i am broken,
and like a text/booked humanoid body,
so precisely and fabulously 
indexed, footnoted, picked clean, and calibrated-
the mind is also frail and subjected 
to unnecessary violence and excess-
i did not want to write or speak-
did not want to listen or read-
did not want to wring from such fragility
stricken words or signs which indicate 
nexttonothing-

(there is something holy in silence,
writes Rumi.)

(allegedly)

i am cold and untenanted
but when chances arise to walk/gather up coals
i usually just start to scribble or babble compulsively,
or, even better, causally turn on 
the computer or television.
It is this kind of evasion
that leaves the mind tonight feeling broken,
like a cartoon human body,
mis-used,
laid to waste,
ridiculed,
polluted,
sedated,
sickened,
bloated,
divested
of
poetry.

desiccated.

i have not searched the hills
nor spent my compulsory time
wandering aimlessly 
without raimentslashwaterslashfood
amidst the demonsslashangels
of solitudeslashisolationslashnothingness.

i have left the screens, walls, and corridors 
standing around and about me,
have let them defineslashdefile me,
taking refuge
only with 
the glutted
and spent.


(i love culture!)


............................................................



Your beauty is such
that when I go for solitary walks
in the evening I invariably
turn west because there's something
out there which reminds me.

The pure pain of a moment
when you suddenly decide to withdraw-
the roses after a rainstorm-
the sandy creek imprint of a bottom-most rung-
back on earth, slightly ruffled,
because certain thirsts went unslaked-
but they was temporary,
and simply could not compete.

I want to come visit you
sometimes where you live
but I'm nervous- never sure
what crazy shit you'll suggest!
I don't think there's been one time
when you did something predictable!
I'm always holding my breath, 
and then finally, when you do 
reach out and touch my fingers or eyelids
I am always inexplicably healed or calmed
in some manner.

And believe it or not,
sometimes that healing 
or calming can hurt!!!
I'll end up staying away
for months and even years at a time-
I hear about you third-hand, perhaps,
and learn that your own life is crumbling-
I am sad and perplexed-
we never lived 
like it was 
our last day 
on earth.
And then I think it might be too late,
and frantically start trying
to contact you.

Dearth.

The gang has all scattered now.
We don't even know our days from our nights!
Most of the flowers we planted
have been obscured or even choked out
by the tall grass of summer.
We don't know what to answer when
strangers inevitably ask the obvious question-
all parties concerned saunter on,
and that is probably precisely the way
that it should be.

Your beauty is the kind
too insane for this tidy new world.
Most people won't touch it.
They protect their children and parents 
from ever even hearing your voice-
because if they did,
it might change things-
it might upset the cute little apple cart.

An absolute downpour you can be on occasion-
total drenching, unremitting, 
a species of melting/washing/facading away,
unidentifiable colors/textures/dimensions 
shot past gutters too inundated
to accept any more, 
yet it keeps drumming down
all the same, even worse,
in spite of the pure 
and very real pain 
alluded to earlier-


(but it's still fun having you as a friend!!!)

(keep me posted on facebook!!!)


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One day, early in the morning, around 4:13 am,
it was still very dark, not much food in the ice-box,
the town slept, trains still passed-
I didn't turn on any lights and soon
found myself hovering 
out on the roof
over Pittsburgh.

There was nobody around,
not even a car or bus passing by, 
just the pine tree, the fire-escape,
and an old telephone pole bowed under
the weight of so many cables it seemed, 
to my own highly un-technological eye, 
on the verge of being pulled back down 
to the original wormhole/motherboard matrices.

Boulevard of the Allies, Uncle Jimmy's,
Grocerie Mercante, the laundromat,
and a new billboard 
for Misty brand cigarettes:
light and sassy.

I could feel and see the skin 
on my face and lips growing tighter-
I had a Greyhound bus ticket inside
and a framed photograph 
of Walt Whitman bedside.
I had a pitcher of tap water
and a lot more
where that came from.

I knew that the small sliver 
of mirror inside over the sink
would only distort and mismanage
the delicate project of shivering breaths
racing in and out thru my "system."
I'd gone ice-skating the night before
at good ol' Schenley Park Caverns 
with some of the best company 
I'd made since "moving" 
to this semi-mythical city.

Remnants of gods, my new job,
my old friends, and my "art"-
dotted and slashed morning skies-
almost legible!
I paid little mind, it was freezing,
branches clicking, the poor stranger 
establishing slightly humbler plans,
the world and all of literary history
as if "dead as ash
in its sleep."


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