Planning Is Everything

Another day and what to make of it? Tu Du list.
Things start to happen, don't worry. Don't stew.
Water down darkness. Ask the sun for a light.
Loot Frederick's of Hollywood. Cultivate pompous grass.
Rewrite Moby Dick as free verse. Irritate life with art.
Plant Rhino rhizome and grow horny. Turn over an old leaf.
Take a road trip to a state of anxiety. Try chewing gun.
Play the Jew's harp in a mosque. Pray for drains.
Steal a cop from a donut. See if LSD still works.
Listen to Rockabilly noir. Experiment with dysentery.
Set out buckets to catch sky. Talk with, not to, turnips.
Insist on having the last word. Get it. Die.
   Or just admit another wasted day,
   lonely as your heart, not as grey.

Words, Worlds, Chaos, Cosmos

     Alchemy is the art of the far and near as is poetry.

Prima Materia. Stoned alchemists groping, questing.
The Face of God. Omphalos. The Chapel Perilous.
Lost path through invisible forest. Hazard.
Base metal to gold. Ignorance to wisdom.
Crucible of transformation. The Rosy Cross.
Inner distillation. Metamorphoses. Essence.
To be bathed in the breath of infinity. Crystalline.
Quantum foam. Particles. Waves. Plenum of possibilities.
     Moving through the world of illusion,
     seeking the sacred glory of fusion.

Well, To Tell You The Truth...

A competition of realities. Every narrative a life. Choose.
You tells yer story and you takes yer chance. Gambol.
No one knows the truth but you and you don't either.
Truth as Hydra. Lop off them heads to no avail.
Grey cat on bookcase. truth. Pain of broken heart. truth.
First morning cigarette. truth. Collapse into orgasm. truth.
Millions of truths conspire to create The Truth.
     We are fabrics woven of infinite strings
     Complexly simple in this world of things.

Ned Ludd In Hell

Technology meant as tool, not lifestyle. Zombies walk.
ROM wasn't built in a day. I tweet therefore I am.
Change comes wicked fast. Computers becoming doorstops.
Weeping tablets die barely born. Phones devour brains.
My whole life is on my phone. Small life indeed.
Friends redefined as virtual entities. Sit on my Facebook.
AI will make sex safe, instant, anonymous and irrelevant.
Gaming console warriors. Pussies. Know nothing of war.
Search engines substitute for knowledge. Shallow.
Mere flesh flees before silicon reality. Resistance futile.
Pin all of this to your ass and see if you still bleed.

'A Rebirth of Wonder'

Every day, make a pledge
to find something where
you've never looked before.
Find a banker fried
on the arc lights of power;
a pair of lacy panties in
your grandpa's sock drawer;
come stains you can't recall
on you best umbrella;
a hundred silver dollars
in the cookie jar;
two used condoms
in your aunt's jello salad;
Nixon's missing 18 minutes on
the 8 track of your Gremlin;
The Ark Of the Covenant
behind your broken fridge;
a hit of Owsley acid
in your dad's bible.
Wonder, wonders, wonderful.
Forget a rebirth of wonder.
The truly marvelous lurks
everywhere around
waiting to be found.

Millennial Musings

     Pull down thy vanity.

Woe be unto you. Sighing children. Left behind.
Make the best of it. Stand by your Brand. Freelance.
Start-ups of futility. Write content for six blogs.
Wake up and smell the copy. Serve drinks.
In three bars. Kludge together the rent. Part-time.
Hustle. Hurry. Make of virtue of activity. Be productive.
Convince yourself busyness is productive. Deliver.
Productivity as Divine. Ten steps to improve.
Seven ways to better. Fifteen hacks to boost.
Means of production stolen long before you.
You are cormorants with rings tight on your necks.
The truth shall make you work. Harder and longer.
Believe you are on your way. You are. To getting old.
Old and broke and lonely. To wondering what went wrong.
Your children will disdain you and the world you made.
Same story told with tattoos and piercings. Good luck.

Waking to Swamp

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

Bones awake groaning. Sing the body decrepit. Don't moan, Agonize!
Neurons snap, crackle, plop. Locate head. Try to find shoes.
Dreams dismissed. Day bleeds into sameness. Relentless boredom.
Tread the doomed bog of Old with attentions. Booby traps.
Each step the future. Abandon all dope. Mortality worm gnaws.
Dementiasand sucks. Tumorgators lurk. Snappers break hips.
EDacondas slither. Limply. Lungconstrictors hide in tar. Gasp.
Peer through blurry eyes. Portage cataracts. Slow streams drip.
Lust peters out. Prostate yourself. Up becomes down. Flexile.
Shelf life gets shorter. Discard after. Only expiration Dates.
So what if life is ebbing. Reality is an unhappy meal. Ignore.
     Be a clueless American. Slap on a big grin. No fears!
     Pretend to enjoy the swamp of these Golden Years.

The Process

     The wind is part of the process/The rain is part of the process.

Gesamtwerk. Parts making whole from parts.
Language. Alphabet, words, phrases, sentences
create a total work based firmly upon... alphabet.
Throw in grammar, punctuation, syntax. Anything possible.
To be. Verb not noun. Moves beyond syntax. To real.
Poet as tinker. No matter. Poems as language. Do.
Right language, correct path, shining mountain.
Seeker sits. Solitude. Transcends journey. World announced.
End as beginning. Form. Gestalt. The beginning of Awe.

She Wakes In Beauty

     wake up and forgive your wrinkles...

Women. Drink cultural Kool-Aid. Believing it.
Grey is old is ugly is useless, So very wrong.
Not fruit for one picking. Fecund. Many harvests.
Fifty is not over. Nor 60. It simply is. Immortal desire.
Time makes changes in everyone. In X and in Y.
Every human age has its own allure. Wake up.
Each woman, any moment, beautiful in her own way.
     Lovely laughter, soul, thoughts, feelings, touch.
     Forgive the lines around your eyes and such.
     Worthy of desire. Desirable. Desired. Much.

Tincture Of Hollow

Seeing a future that does not exist.
Dead child. Lost mother. Empty cradle.
Loveless heart. Soul minus zero. No companion.
Friends far away. Leaden morning stillness.
Noun without verb. Lonely adjective. Period.
Days upon days upon days of endless same.
Dysfunctional GPS. Maps that lead nowhere.
Rooms of the void. House of many sorrows.
Untold story without ending. Unwritten poems.
Homeless veterans. All soldiers at night. Fear.
Imaginary kisses. Touches of air. Lost caresses.
Knowing that everything that comes next is nothing;
     knowing that you really know that.

My Style Guide

Poems are liquid prose. Prose insists. Poems plead.
Kale tastes best in darkness. Residue of texture.
I is romantic vestige. Deport it. Feel the freedom.
Irony is literate decadence. Stick to sarcasm. Common voice.
Drumbeat of iambs in veins. Just the facts, Ma'am.
Edgy as opposed to hard. Violent refusal to respond.
Adjectives limited. Adverbs useless. Nouns just sit.
Ah, but verbs. Verbs as we are. We are verbs. Creating.
Other parts, only utilitarian. Sequence of composition.
Words in a row marching like soldiers to certain death.
Metaphors compressed as diamonds. Regal and rusted.
The clock's face reveals nothing. Blank chronology.
Humor provides shelter. Lear on the moor. Fool.
Lines in a stanza remain lines. Mere artifice
Love is in and out of every door. Root of desire.
Take whatever you like. Make it new. Make it new.
Feel noose around neck. Have the last word. Anyway.

Cheep Found Poem #1

Nouns and verbs swirls. Word anarchy. Everyone a poet.

So, what if the day just doesn't want to be seized? Harassment?
Pay no attention to my browsing history. I’m a writer, not a serial killer.
Women never want much, only everything you are or will be.
He said he would stuff my taco unlike any before him;
and boy did he! I've always wanted a man who could cook.
Somedays, you just know that the jail time was worth it.
Cows who give milk for free never know what a respectable farmer is.
Dude! Never photoshop a horse's cock over yours. I like horses.
Relearn the dying art of thinking before you fucking speak.
I scream. You scream. We come. Police come. Awkward.
Thought it was a loofah but it turned out to be steel wool.
Sixty is the new 40. Try getting your penis to believe that.
The only fact is that you'll never understand anything at all.
I never flirt with danger but danger won't stop flirting with me.
She dumped me because I just stood there with my moves unbusted.
Watching internet sex is like masturbating without arms.
I bet that pride of yours doesn't enjoy snuggling like I do.
You don't have to be desperately lonely to cheep, but it helps.

Say anything you like. After all, only everyone will see it.

Bullets Dipped In Pig's Blood Not Tasty

Did not work out well for Brits circa 1857.
Sepoys blown from guns. Lesson learned. Empire upheld.
In America, history does not apply. Only winning.
When 3.3 million get up and leave. Syrian Chaos.
Oh that magic feeling: nowhere to go. Or elsewhere.
Have much. Use much. Enjoy much. Care little.
Other than genocide. No obvious solution. Or Malthus.
Cats cry in Gelid winter. Home where you don't find it.
Gigantic cakewalk with no chairs. Only losers.
Oh where, oh where, will these little lambs go.
Anywhere but your back yard. Concern, not Welcome.
Find great open spaces: Australia, Antarctica.
Out of sight out of mind. Heart grows forgetful.
Remember Law of Unintended Consequences:
     I and the Public know what all schoolchildren learn;
     Those to whom Evil is done, do Evil in return.

Gone Girl

     Divorce is the sign of knowledge in our time. wcw

Empty chair. Sun frowning through blinds on lifeless rooms.
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
Singing now to only one. A history of the void. Hollow words.
Know the past. You were there. In everything done. Touch.
Boxed up kid's toys. Forgotten gifts. Solitary thoughts.
Echoes of children's voices. Fading to grown up.
No one knows what lurks down the road. Dead end.
Memories of the missing. One way conversations. Unsung songs.
Days without direction. Nights of nothing. Empty bed blues.
Ransacked nostalgia. Random recollections. Loneliness.
     You and I we're like water to the sea,
     What can one without the other be.

Sleepy Scripture

Finally a day devoid of sharp edges.
The world in focus. For a moment. Enjoy.
Insomnia burns like Saint Augustine's fire.
Nights much longer than swooning pig orgasms.
Days that shimmer, stab, shake and suck.
Aching eyes and aching I. Queasiness.
Every eternal question demanding answer.
Random blasts from unwelcome pasts.
Useless drugs. Alcohol too much pain.
Eventually, to sleep, to dream. Oblivion
attained. But then, it all begins again.

Fifteen Minutes Of Twitter-pated by @Mike Essig51

Every poem a foundling. Ancestry uncertain. Cuckoo. Kidnapped.
Each line liberated from a huge, noisy foul. Taken not stolen.
Don't put all your words in one. Task it to be new.
Almost bought organic bananas yesterday like some kind of millionaire.
Some of the best times of my life have no photographic evidence.
I often wonder where my thoughts come from. Perhaps Uranus.
Date a girl with small hands.. Everything will look bigger next to them.
Get to the point. My medication is starting to wear off.....
Karaoke, because being an obnoxious drunk isn't embarrassing enough.
If I am the man of your dreams, my condolences. Stupid is.
It's all fun and fiction until you show up missing. Internet romance.
My thighs are looking awfully lonely without you between them.
You've spent an entire day creating the ultimate sheep pun,
but have you ever considered the ramifications? Disordered thoughts.
Die a quick and painless death: the new American Dream. Lonely kills.
All I need is just a little cherishing. Comeuppance. Cherish is the word.
Listen, karma is the bitch. I am simply her occasional instrument.
Meaning becomes data becomes information becomes content becomes meaningless.
Writer creates order. Otherwise only words in a row. Whole more than parts.
Big bird tweets often. Means nothing. Vacancy. Disappear into void.
Shout out the words you don't understand. Leave them to the poet's hand.

Kalamazoo

In America, nichts neues. Death stalks street corners
like a lurking cassowary. Blood the National Color.
Random acts of madness practiced from ambush.
General lack of civility. Shout each other down.
The Other is out there being otherwise. Fear.
Arm yourselves! Disarm yourselves! Dead anyway.
Impenetrable, crystalline, indestructible ignorance.
Nothing to be done but hold on by sitting tight
until the next blasts of rage rend the night.

Love Pome

     tis pity she's no more

A redolence of musk pervades the evening's air.
Take situation in hand. Sweat and perfume. Lubricious.
Teasing digits. Pressures applied. Tense of touch.
Brush of thumb she begins to writhe. Early moaning.
Damp, wet, moist, oozing, dripping, slippy. Fruition.
Coming to. A dance of desire. So many ups and downs.
Withdraw slowly. Enter with alacrity. More is not less.
Hollows of legs on shoulders. Depth charges. Grasp of gasps.
Muscles massage. Internal grip. External eruption.
Bear down. Press your case. Silent screams. Everything ends.
Simply collapse into delight. Smooth texture. Fine night.

Ain't That Amerika

Rather seek a mad climate:
happy, peaceful, elegant.
By brilliant abstractions lit.
A revolution must occur
in the people's minds
years before
the Revolution occurs.
Plant a seed. Pray for rain.
Life languishes
where profit pervades,
ignorance doth flourish.
The arts a septic sewer.
The marketplace a God.
Carcasses for sacrifice.
Remove base appetite
and this generation dies.
Send them on their way.
Flush the bankers.
Lose all interest. Live
to write another day.

Kissed By Fire

     brighter than a thousand suns...

Helicopters scud the night. Syllables penetrate deeply.
Mulch has no value. Fingers curled softly in sleep.
Style marks the spot. Weapons hidden beneath kilts.
Pinpoint errors. Know where you are. Charlie Parker got lost.
You're a little teapot. The cat ponders these things.
Glamour a kind of architecture. National Enquirer a house.
Her only idea disastrous. He entered from behind. Stealth.
Take it any way you want it. Bodily distillations of poison.
Something longer perhaps? Squash blossoms lovely. Preferences.
Ferns are not intentional. He wants a mulligan. Sentences question.
Ahead engorged. The color purple. Glance. Not quite wet.
Humpty-Dumpty the primary archetype. Master Coder. Triple Helix.
   If this gum be stale: do not chew it;
   If you are a window: draw the blinds.
   Or writhe in live orgasm of meaningful.
      Come along to Carthage and Burn.

Only Muzzled Dogs Get Tenure

      An Ode to Edumacation


School buses gather like trains to Auschwitz.
Find seat, sit down, shut up. Hear the told.
Chairs nailed to floors. Don't rattle your chains.
Leaves near ground wither first. Get'em young.
Teachers design brains of meat by-products.
Rain half truths on potted plants. Earn an Apple.
Prepare for jobs never gotten, for lives not to be.
Homework extends domain of willful ignorance.
Repetition equals indoctrination unto dead souls.
Students leave class with hollowly sculpted heads.
Pure, organic, 100% US Fancy Grade A stupidity.
Walk only in the footsteps of footsteps walked in.
Every single muzzled dog gets tenure. Heal!
And so their mouths are stopped with ignorance.
With ignorance hath no man a goodly house.
     Sheep, cattle and lemmings interbred,
     In perfect harmony over ledges led.

Internet Stories And Lists 4 U

    Read and weep...

16 Ways to a Bigger Sock.
Why you should kill your boss now.
7 Ways to Thieve Your Lover.
11 ways to Grow Your Own Bud Lite.
The One Hard Thing Harried Women Want.
43 Reasons to Die Young.
Vladimir Putin For President!
13 Yoga Positions Against Entropy.
Learn to Pick Orgasms From Trees.
33 Reasons to Love Your Shingles.
Proof Obama Murdered Scalia.
14 Methods For Preventing Dottle.
Why Internet Lists Make You Stupid.
666 Ways To Fail At Suicide.
The Number One Reason Literacy Is Dead.

Sing A Song Of Past Tense

Conditioned preference for narrative condemns millions to sleep.
Nothing but words in a row. Grammar modifies Prosody.
Punctuation marks divide. Syntax engenders meaning.
You only think you can control your pen. Exercise.

Tell you a story:

Remove staples before eating pizza. Stop Continental Drift.
Insist on your birthright of way. Specific smell of chalk.
Wobbling on 10 speed toward solar array. One sun; one broom.
Killed father and went down to the crossroads. Oh, mamma.
Gnosis bunker uncovered in old Runes. Treat stares with caution.
Don't point that Tuba this way! Wounded buffalo roam Iowa.
Green parrots chatter in back yards. Herd of helicopters.
Nips up! A Japanese morning. Pointing the way. Go figure.
Strains to a dropping deuce. Red wheelbarrow, full of sadness.
Fake work and all pray makes a dead Jack off. Harder.
All old cowboys must dismount eventually. This space for sale.

You tell a story back.

Make it good. So many choices. Not sleepy at all. Go on.
Remember. Readers as ghost writers. Ghost writers in the lie.
How many tales can you eke out of this? Spell me please.
Take responsibility for the narrative you create. Good luck!

After The Affair

Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.

Concrete instances of emptiness.
Blinds not drawn. Flowers do not arrive.
Bed made tight; no stilettos. Never sticky.
Doves alone coo. Pet names only for pets.
No need to shave. Last night's wine. One glass.
Coffee becomes erotic. Condo not condoms.
Hands and knees only to fix sink. No position.
No lipstick stains the staff. Lingerie a catalog.
Flag always at half mast. Sleep soft, not deep.
A cock is a chicken; a pussy is a cat.
Fingers seeking fondle find nothing.
Blowing your nose becomes PDA.
Ghostly hands caress vanished thighs.
All embraces are distant. Hugging your sister.
Mysteries of faded flesh; sound after sigh
Not a trace of perfume or personality.
The orgasmically charged what isn't.
What is missing prevails. What was is missing.

Dust You Off

Just got back from Vietnam baby, and that's a long, long way from New Orleans... B.B. King

Choppers off in the friendly skies.
This whirling defies gravity. A dying fall.
Talons of tracers reach toward heaven.
Just being alive violates your parole.
Beneath, a carpet of destruction.
Live ammo. A round of rounds. Incoming.
Smell of burnt flesh chokes. Crispy critters.
Napalm as the new normal. Flares beget light,
illume a scene of mushrooms and shades.
No hurry. The dead are patient. Wounded less so.
Bag'em and tag'em. Don't mean nothing.
Never did. Sky up and wing away.
Always more. Return again another day.

Reverso C CXX On Paradiso

What have I made? What have I done?
Let those I love forgive what I have made.
Let the gods forgive what I have done.
Let the wind that speaks Paradise,
let it speak of what I have tried to do.
To be a man and not a destroyer.
To find the path to Paradise.
Beauty, not madness or unfinished
tangled works. The pillow not the case.
In my homeland only shades stalk.
Fear is the forefather of cruelty.
To escape fear and find the way.
There are many ways but only One Way.
We live a thousand years in a wink.
Many wrong turns but perhaps a few right.
Let those I love forgive what I have made.
Let the gods forgive what I have done.

Loneliness List

Mistaken notes toward a history of silence.
Parking lot of abandoned shopping carts.
Empty whiskey bottles. Footless footwear.
Snow that won't stick. Sky of no birds.
Voiceless echo. Discarded condoms.
Page without words. Unwritten poems.
Sentence without subject. Misplaced melody.
Many hopes but no expectations. Unmade beds.
Plotless novels. Men's room lacking urinals.
Laundromat at 3 AM. Skirt without woman.
Flesh of your empty palm. Earless moaning.
Dead for no reason. Stack of unpaid bills.
Naked clothesline in the rain. Unread books.
How much of nothing can you take? Beam me up.

String Theory Of Language

Do not scorn the scribe for your own distemper.
Sentences leap to connect fate's dots.
Read your pride out loud even to earless snakes.
Thoughts materialize as word masses, matters.
All eye sequence is determined, syntax.
A proof punches Wittgenstein's ear. Not the case.
Do not confuse the Literature of Solitude
with the Solitude of Literature, one not the other.
The mind of dis-ease most healthiest ist.
Jettison thou then thy maad crye for order
and any language may be learned.
Let never this simple tung punish your ear.
Surrender. Fall into Grace and alles clear.

Talking Bout An Evolution

From whence springs his or her story?
Just what drives the wave to surge and break.
Evolution, not revolution, determines destiny:
Lungfish gasping in a mudflat. Initial syllables.
Every beginning begins at the beginning.
Only victories allowed to repeat themselves.
This is the way the way the word begins.
Endless repetition until only Now remains.
Homer, Dante, Shakespeare: one human voice:
One song sung sighing across the sky.

In Which Jackson Pollock Attempts Infinity

Try to paint imagining. What does that look like?
Maybe use a thinner brush or none at all.
Wear Birkenstocks with white socks.
Helpful? If not, look for details of masochism.
Listen for the fractal music. Hear its nots.
Those are swirls that were your eyes. Blink!
Try playing dinosaurs at a local porn store.
Chug a quivering quart of whiskey as primer.
Focus on penetrating the dance of dildos.
No? Then imagine your imagination imagining.
Or, just give up and buy a copy of Cheese For Dummies.
Kick back and enjoy a gnawing evening off.

Son At Earring

Enter only through the revolting door.
River running down sleep steeps to the sea.
A dearth of beer cans wish for so much more.
Content and coherence all plain to be.
Why were we made large to become so small?
Desperate succulents clinging to rocks.
Play what you will, by good, and pluck it all!
That bunch in the noose really rooked your socks.
Worlds woven with words wear quickly away.
Be grateful for just a line of knowing.
This weather appears to be hear to say.
Everything's gathered in tears a-flowing.
     Play with those sounds completely at your ease:
     No words were harmed in the making of these.

Selbstmörder

Eat, sleep, breathe, excrete,
a body living does not a life make.
Oh! Black dog do not my heart devour.
Only the lonely know only the lonely.
Know thing not without touch lives.
Do you smell that smell? Do not inhale.
Kick hard to keep the burly beast at bay.
Or cross the bar onto wine-dark depths,
Song of sirens. Whispers of doom.
How soothing simply to sink. Down.
Sometimes, the brain may prefer the drain.
Make the judgementally ill be still.
In my mania is my maintenance.
The abyss remains to revisit always.
Difficult balance: live or cease pain.
To resist. To defy.  All that does remain.
Good morning, blues, how do you do?
To keep it or to give it away.
Bump. Bump. Down the funny steps.
Bear up. Hold on. Call that another day,
but sand through the glass' neck still drips.

Fodders and Suns

Pick a pack of peppered Pound; let St. Joyce a lullaby sing.
The one a long time loony been; the  other in the night write cackled.
Whatever you can't hear is music. Between notes find Mozart and Coltrane.
Words like the locust-shells, moved by no inner being. Old men and camels.
Would you call yourself pronoun or proverb? A congress of dead nerves.
In America, the monied ever waiting to pounce: pedophiles circling schoolyard.
Perhaps life is terrible when you are truly stupid.
Set self to write A Compleat History of Water. Just testing.
Neither is your nose bent nor do vicious waves flog beaches.
Walk upon your tipi toes - order can become a chronic, wasting illness.
Poems are not a life, even when blissed. Only a prosody of tennis.
Avoid sad death marches of warbler watching. Learn to love kale.
Take up theoretical spelunking or practice extreme atrophy.
Long stretches of boredom and dread forge solidarity with despair.
Invent a formal vocabulary of incoherence; earn time off for time served.
Tread with caution; each word a potentially lethal landmine.
In the night at the fading of the stars, Mr Finn will be found again.
You have now entered a poetry made of buttons. Time to start pushing.

Breaking Of Day

So many poems begin at morning because everything does.
Every day a must to make again. Every poem also.
Collage, montage, pastiche, not hodgepodge or mishmash.
Rather a synthesis. The pieces speak in many tounges.
Sight is a silent witness: only writing declares. Hard listen must.
Why do so many sit with open mouths? Astound to astonishment.
Slouching saxophones sound sour. Blue sink atop a mushroom
Engage in the violence of sitting still. Demented duck at door.
Your failure to speak is a provocation. Wake the shaking brain.
The cigarettes of language lighted by lightening.
Unzip the poem with fervor but stroke it gently.
Each and every broken straw a calamity. Mania makes more.
Nietzche tormented by hemorrhoids. Doctrine of Eternal
Pain in the Ass. Philosophy is a sight that will not resolve.
Any meaning you don't get is the reason it eludes you.
A wall made of bricks is more than just bricks.
London Bridge stands strong in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
These fragments have I shored against morning's ruin.
Dive into the unknown day determined to. Just that,
Knowing the grains of sand drip away and away.

Shrink-wrapped Hoodie-heads

The day's inertia grips an old, cold body.
Too dangerous to doze while ice melts.
Early morning commotion at the brain station.
An unnamed bird tweets but lacks followers.
Gesticulation of unknown parts. Shake the
waking brain: dissolve the haze of logic.
A Day Of Decision: to shave or not to shave.
Curse all the rules you learned in schools.
The difficulty of simultaneously breaking out
and in. White boys with hoodie-heads clearly
ignorant of color wheels. Each word waffle
in the mind meaning means. This craft makes
crazy but air and fire clarify these lines.
Poets voluntary outlaws in American eyes.
Who needs shrink wrapped verses? You are
implicated in whatever you choose to read.
Do not interrupt and demand exegesis;
we do not deal in scripture or litany;
you may only get the interpretation of wolves.
Only this blinky moment of alphabet unites us.
Armageddon is your beard to scratch. Have at it.

Language Suite #4

Let us sink and seek the miraculous,
steal from the clothesline of nostalgia.
The crushing weight of a pith helmet.
The quandary that every exit out opens in.
What is not remembered still exists;
the song never plucked rings still.
Cease stifling epismetological masturbation.
In the end, very few will comprehend.
Hard feet on a barewood floor. Then flush.
Iced sausages and cold blood for breakfast.
French toast boasts an aftertaste of paper.
Sign on cafe: Enter ye and be devoured.
It is always eat up or be eaten up.
What is the reference of it in that sentence?
Converse with horses in a dingy sushi bar.
Horoscopes promise passionate promiscuity.
Sometimes cigars can act like pricks.
Two hours of smoke an extended orgasm.
Purchase a pack of Godzillas. Enjoy.
You are responsible for whatever you read.
Do not assault Noman's ears for explanations.
Twist the goddess's knickers from nostalgic rope.
Wear them well where you will wear them.
Feel the miraculous swell and understand.

Language Suite #3

Grey cat scratches at beige carpet. Bit of a trance state.
Politically correct poetry. That phrase is not referential.
Ponderously pissed pachyderms. Porously pleated Platypi.
Form without content. A flattening of the core grammar.
Bring the water to the well. Fill your lyrebird with syntax.
How must words be ordered when thoughts must be free to fly.
Conjunction junction has lost its function.
Paint emotion pictures. The word less. Store more lore.
Pigeons forget their cities. Diversify your beverages.
If you are seeking a story you are seeking in vain.
Inhere the story. Only readers possess that power.
No need Noman need narrate no necessities.
Poor old Noman just another melting snowman.
Escapades egregious: only look to find them where you are.
America is open 24/7. Titillating tacos for the taking.
Say a word never said. Write a word never written. Impossible.
Originality a pragmatically unoriginal constraining concept.
Pluck the low hanging fruit. Make that kazoo toot! toot!
Dream of your car lost in a dangerous neighborhood.
You might can do that but it confers no ownership.
The periplum plies pleasantly chilly tropics:
shivering  tigers, anacondas in snowsuits, flamingos in fur.
Again that damn cat scratches but the walls of a box.
Noman wakes wide into a world of whirled dis-ease.
What occurred in the interim not never original.
Better a bird in hand. Alls well that ends well.

Language Suite #2

An old man stretched upon a coach head on a pillow
longing for sleep like a desert for rain.
Intense emotion in his motionless motion.
The jungle trance dance of in-between.
Inchoate leap and whirl of images;
the fading twilight of meaning drains away.
Where does your you're go when you aren't?
When does a bassoon mimic a violin?
There is no poem here; if you seek eye peace begone.
Words fall like leaves between alphabet and syntax.
What looms inside this weave? Language a special doom.
Sheep eat pumpkins but only chickens eat pig shit.
Yapping dogs teach litachoor to deaf idiots.
Ostriches in party hats laugh because they know.
Poetry made in a days; motorcycles jump to conclusions;
the butler in the library with a wrench.
Eye lids flutter is a scene's scene seen.
Let the microphones make it all official.
The old man snores and sighs. He slumbers in
Hell, his furnished room too cramped for a bed.
The quality of mercy is not strained,
but the quality of consciousness is scarred
by chairs asleep on cats and homicidal Dodos
that thrive on the darkness where he unaware dreams.

Language Suite #1

The fecund brain flares apace.
Neurons do not believe in order,
they simply fire at will.
Chaos in meaning: chaos is meaning.
Meaning meaning order means
an imposed fiction of control,
to herd the sheep without bo peep.
Narrative gasps and flops and dies
already a fish to be fossilized.
Pick a word, a phrase, a sentence,
rearrange at will, call that order,
call that your very own.
Pick a Pound, a Periplum, a Period.
Noman has already visited.
Everything already written
only a mine of minds to be mined
and made NEW over and over.
This has all happened before;
it will all happen again.
Tchaikovsky stole from Beethoven,
Beethoven stole from Mozart,
Mozart stole from God.
Noman owns there words.
All a matter of no fortune
and perhaps a name to come.
Even an infinity of tears
cannot dampen the brain's cheeks.
Fling the paint and let it drip.
Coherence gone and good riddance.
Partake of what is and move on.

Aeromancy

February a baleful month
dabbed with deep darkness,
the calendar's mortuary
nature's own Gulag.
Its window opens upon
possible impossibilities
none of which yield joy.
Crows plummet murderously
from the heavens
vainly trying to flee
into spring but merely splat.
Roads are crushed
beneath a carpet of hoar.
Frosted blimps soar naked.
Boots refuse to stay tied.
Your parent's nightmares
freeze your sweaty sleep.
Snow falls like dead swans.
Eclairs crystallize into
lumps too solid to enjoy.
A month of undeserved
solitary confinement
that trembles the soul.
A deep achromic terror
keening coldness
in a huge white wail
penetrating the ears
until march stops
the madness and hope
blossoms as crocuses,
apricity achieved,
small phosphorescent
dots of desire.

A Redeeming Pastime

The best game in town
must be playing chess with God.

The omniscient old dude
really fucked up by installing
that pesky free will.

Now he knows every possible
move you can make, but not
the one you will make.

Scholar's mate or Fool's mate;
pieces of cake, both sweet
redemption in the mortal mouth.

My 15 minutes have arrived!

Butterfly Being

So many poems birthed at dawn
or just before
when the trickster gods
are passed out and cannot
plot pratfalls for mere mortals.
Turmoil eases up a bit,
but anything can come next.
You might lose the courage
to eat breakfast or find yourself
trying to type on liquid paper.
You could be struck by
nostalgia for hula hoops or
begin to feel your teeth dissolve.
You want to make a poem that
coils, rises up and strikes
the heart like an angry snake
but it is easy to get side tracked.
After all, you are only bones
in a sack spitting out words
that vainly seek forever and
the present so successfully
hides the future. But it's early,
go down into the quarry of language,
pick up a few likely chunks,
haul them back and let the world
select the words. Be patient as
a telephone waiting to ring.
Dare to shit  a peach. Let the
words gather unto themselves
like clouds until each new page,
scarred by those glyphs,
becomes the living promise
of the day just begun, like
a butterfly gliding over clover.
No task. Only the being of.

The Writer's Life

I write when I rise.
What is palpable at morning,
incorporeal at evening.
Coffee maker fogs the window.
The dawn is inconsolable.
It would be happier with
the promise of more moons.
Empty beer bottles of fear
in the early morning brain.
Disorder of bedsheets,
buzz of flourescent lamp,
Petrified fish gasp
in the empty unnoticed bowl.
Some eyes are windows,
others packed with bricks.
Whisper of morning traffic,
hum of the space heater.
Time to get to work:
words staining paper
with random statements,
each statement evolves a mask,
each mask without a clue
what lies behind, what lies ahead.

Fateful Day

If only, on that fateful day,
my Draft Board had been on LSD.
They might have sent me to Wonderland
to explain croquet and the proper pouring of tea;
they might have sent me to OZ
to get into Dorothy's pants or train flying monkeys;
they might have sent me to Hogwarts
to get an advanced degree in something useful;
they might have sent me to Narnia
in search of beaver pelts and talking mice;
they might have sent me to Neverland
to provide anger counselling to Captain Hook;
but no, instead, imagination failed utterly
and those three patriot imbeciles sent me to Vietnam.
If only, on that fateful day,
my Draft Board had been on LSD.

The Adjunct's Nervous Breakdown

I shall declare myself the über-instructor to the world at large.
Pedagogically speaking, I will unleash wonder and enchantment.
I am committed to the fresh production of unnecessary needs.
My head will become a fully automated factory of sunlight.
All of my sentences will bend my students souls toward that sun.
I will show them how to master the art of wallpapering
so they might learn to live in harmony with the TAO.
No knowledge will be too arcane or mundane for us.
Elves in lederhosen will learn to swallow ticking clocks.
Music classes will be busy trumpeting sonatas through mutant noses.
Home Ec students will find the recipe for baking the square root of pie.
Football players will discover quantum botany while piled on fumbles.
Weavers will unravel the sociology of bed clothes.
Psychologists will take up morosely dispensing Screaming Orgasms.
Physicists will figure out how to breed better cats.
Gaia herself will imagine how to shed her current cancer.
I will accomplish all of this without a PhD or even a raincoat.
Even Dante's birds in Hell shall seek my instruction!
At first, my solitude will be that of a clothed person on a nude beach,
but soon multitudes will take up the calling and together
we will establish the ultimate university, The University of the Absurd.
Only then will the fully practical become established within the world,
only then will all the pandas be repatriated to their loved ones in China.

Perks

One more soul crushing bleak grey morning.
Ah, but there are perks to poetry.
A flick of imagination and I am gone
to a warm country, green, with beaches
and castles and four poster beds
in one of which I am just now
waking wrapped around a lovely lass
to a day of azure skies and heat.
In some ways, poetry doesn't pay well,
but in others, it can make you rich indeed.

Things To Do At Two AM

Write bad poems about insomnia.
See how long you can hold your breath.
Pretend you are really asleep.
Conjugate manhole covers.
Recall the first name of
everyone you've ever slept with
and spell them all backwards.
Try to remember when you were newly
minted and unscratched by the future.
Cut your finger nails and then
incinerate them to ward off bad JuJu.
Learn Romanian and teach it to your cat.
Attempt to remember how exactly you
ended up tonight, alone, in a small room.
Stare at the ceiling. Stare at it more.
Develop a comprehensive Theory of Regret.
Remember who you are and
be very happy about who you are not.
Chuck it all. Take some pills. Fall asleep.

You Can Never Get Your Foot Out Of The Same River Even Once

Everything arrives, but nothing stays
nor does anything real ever change.
Just try to hold one day in your hands.
It becomes a different same day.
The past blossoms at lightening speed,
the future arrives suddenly, now is forever.
Light one instant; dark the next.
All stories stretched far enough end in death,
deaths always far away until they aren't,
deaths that can only happen right now.
The door of time: forever ajar, opening
upon a wonderland of uncertainty.

Shifting Into The Future

He was generally known to be shiftless, going nowhere.
Truly, his idea of a career was dawdling in pleasure;
sitting on a deck, drinking a few beers, reading,
waiting for words to coalesce, imagining impossibilities:
A kind of intensity and freedom found in no cubicle.
Then he discovered as a poet people considered his shiftlessness work.
He wasn't merely loafing, he was on a career path.
It didn't pay much and chances for advancement were slim.
But that didn't matter, he was finally going somewhere,
even if that somewhere was nowhere, right back where he'd begun.

Cat Snow Night Perhaps

Powerfully quiet  magic hushes the world.
Only Memory disturbs the night's calm.
Winter's first snow stretches tight on the earth.
No people, nor cars, a basket of silence;
but the past creates its chaotic clamor
even in this desert of frost and darkness
making the mind queasy with reluctant remorse.
The Great Unlived What Might Have Been looms:
the vivid eyes of lovers with forgottens names,
bullets that missed by just enough,
so many impossible wrong turns taken,
forty years of working your way up to nothing,
even indigence raised to the level of art.
The cat snores on a shelf by the window.
You are caught alone in your personal mythology.
Your secret lies stick in your throat,
all of them, both futile and necessary,
all the things you killed to stay alive.
You are the archaeologist of your being,
selectively opening the book of your life
to carefully chosen pages, leaving some unread,
dreading the frightful precision of their words
that scream out, nothing means much more than anything;
and the whole tale might be told differently
reimagined in some furiously redemptive light
before the frangible spell of alternatives
is broken by morning's disappointment, the
matutinal sun sweeping magic off the gelid drifts.

The Young Dead

Imagine your young
loves all dead.
     
The skinny one
with the taut nipples
who exuded energy,
under the earth.

The short, roundish one
who screamed for
the Savior every time
she came, with him now.

The tall, sophisticated
Greenwich beauty,
out of your league,
but intrigued
and found your heart,
thirteen years gone.

How can such
living, warm, smart
presences simply
fall off the earth?

But they do and
everyday
more of them.

Until you follow.