Meditation on a Romantic Obsession

My muse, my heart,

won't you lie with me now? 

Dreaming is better, anyhow.

 

My autistic brain?

My juvenile heart?

Only reality can tear us apart. 

 

To die, to sleep, perchance to dream.

The unfolding of time, 

the absence of meaning. 

 

Let's share a cigarette. 

Let's talk about love. 

The night that he raped you, 

you looked like a dove. 

 

Are you still fucking women? 

I'm sorry, but no, 

I would never kiss you, 

as you already know. 

 

Let's share a cup of coffee.

In a moment, I must go.

I won't tell you why I came here,

and I suppose you'll never know.

Long Hours

I remember long hours

shuttered in my room.

Allmusic.

Star Wars battlefront.

Limewire.

Indie rock bliss 

and loneliness.

India

Hot and humid roadways crammed with
tuks, trucks, scooters,
men, women, cows, bulls
smoke, exhaust, shit and trash.

Lord Siva sits aloft
hordes of Isreal's children
and Vasuki watches keenly
as they burn through Kashmere's finest.

Rich white yuppies scarred by divorce,
eating yogurt with strangers in Varanasi. 

What is life? 

Sun salutations, meditation and ecstatic dance. 
Singing around the fire in Dharamkot.
Forgetting the war...and fumbling for meaning. 

A Memory

In a bathtub,
in a bar, 
in Budapest

I sip a cold hefeweizen 
my legs across your lap
and your hand on my thigh.

Sunlight washes down
through a glass ceiling 
and your voice is music--
not Beethoven or Bach, 
but modern indie rock, 
and I'm in love

in Budapest,
in a bar,
in a bathtub. 

Chinese Elms

"They're poison" Gary said.

They spread out from the roots.

We cut the branches off

and ripped out all the shoots.

When I was a tiny child:
mom, the stroller and me.

Golden sunlight glimmered

through the tops of trees.

Thirty six years later

I found that copse of trees,

and saw they were Chinese Elms

as I examined the leaves.

The Loser Messiah

The Loser Messiah, I wasn't born.
My early years were not forlorn. 
There were no three wise men with gifts, 
of incense made from animal shits. 

But then I felt myself turn mean, 
perhaps it was something in my genes. 
I felt my self become unclean, 
with rotten karma ripening.

I grew progressively worse in luck.
I earned a black belt of fucking up
And every time I did some ill, 
I could only fall farther still. 

I ran into walls and stubbed my toes. 
I looked as if I steamed and smoked. 
I choked on fish and chicken bones. 
I read the modern ancient tomes. 

Who are Lear and Oedipus Rex?
My aura has the strangest effect.  
Everything around me gets fucked.
The shit on me is never unstuck.

I cannot help but fall down the stairs
and God is always waiting there. 
To kick the holy hell out of me 
then chortle at me while I bleed.

And oh, how could this happen to me? 
I'm ready to quit and I'm only sixteen. 
I just want a fork and a bite of the pie,
But maybe it's better to curl up and die. 

I imagine my future and it isn't nifty. 
I'm poor and sick and alone and I'm fifty. 
I'm up to my knees in the swamp and I'm thinking
of how to get out, but I'm rapidly sinking. 

 


 

Dietary Hipocracy

They insist we’re looking for attention
with our gastronomical appraisal.
And so assume a bizarre contention:
They know of all who trade their steak for kale.

What a triumph of circular reasoning, 

to assume all herbivores advertise
because they know our choice of seasoning
because we can’t help but to publicize.

They say that our untiring sedition
is always the source of their ammunition.
How terrible strange and ironic then
that they accuse us more than we do them.

One Thousand Dicks

I am the man with one thousand dicks.
Cumming in the morning.
Cumming in the afternoon.
Cumming at night.
Cumming on your mother.
Cumming on the dog.
Cumming on the carpet.
Cumming in your coffee.
It's all over the goddamn place. 

Oh yeah.
One thousands dicks!

Brats

Spoiled brats bound to become doctors, dentists, lawyers and other kinds of thieves.
So sure their luck will last forever.
Their fortunes run on high-octane arrogance.

Is it better to be the worst of demi-gods, fallen down to Earth...

...or the most noble of animals, promoted from the blood and muck?

Integrity must be a sort of fungus, because it grows best in shit.

And pride is a fine champagne that long improves with age,
then suddenly turns to piss.

Vichara

Who am I?

Mist and breath.

Who am I?

A ghost in a shell. 

Who am I?

Hey! 

Who's asking?

Don't know:  neti, neti, neti. 

Whoever it is, he's some kind of crazy painter. 

Hey!

Who are you painting, there, Michael?

I once asked a Sunim: what's the sound of one hand clapping?

"Don't tell him, Subha."

"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

Seoul

Downtown Jinju on a Thursday night.
Floating down the sidewalk.
Looking for A/V cables.
Who built this city, claustrophobic and dirty?

A vision of Seoul, two thousand years ago:
Han river people.
They are bamboo and grass.
They are Sun and Earth.

I must go to ancient Seoul.

Morning

Oh lovely lovely world there is no hot and no cold and full of colorssymbolsshapes and meaning that has meanings for real for real for real  and I am the start, the end, the star the actors, the stage the lights the lighting and the ocean forever forever forever moving swaying, glimmer and glittering so full so full but draining draining draining and I know what's coming.

I'm waking.

Mind is coming.

Me is coming.

Body is coming,

Oh no.

The Kooks

The kooks are partying out in the cold.
It's almost twelve.
And fucking freezing!

Silence

Silence is a song.
Listen close, and you can hear the singing.
A thousand angels combine their voice
like weaving silk with golden thread.

City Life

My job destroys me a little more every day,
but it's easy and the hours are short
and it pays the rent to the tiny basement suite
that I share with my friend who is not a friend
who smokes pot ten times a day
and stares into the video screen ten hours a day
that dominates the 500 square foot common space
and outside there are nothing but roads roads roads
and sometimes a hooker standing in the cold
and when I walk to the bus stop, I wonder
how there can be so many people driving by
one after the next after the next after the next forever,
and I can't even afford a car let alone the gas or the insurance
so I cannot get onto that road and drive far, far, away
from the anxiousness I feel every day
and the soul-crushing job that I swore when I was young
that I would never do, but I do
because it's easy and the hours are short
and anything more would kill me.



I must

remember

to breathe.


Breathe.

It Ain't Easy Being Green

I'm an alien
floating above you in a a UFO
woooooooo-oooooooo-ooooooooo
I'll dazzle you
with my myriad lights all blinking,
a kaleidoscope of colors
making tracers, 
provoking seizures.

I'm an alien.
I live far away,
in the outer-reaches of the Milky-Way.
When I bend my tongue and move my mouth
to try and make words come out

all you hear are hear is noises like:

ooooooooh-woooooo-ooooooooo
ooooooooh-woooooo-ooooooooo.

I'm an alien.
I'm from far far way.
I'm an alien and I'll alienate you.

Kids These Days

Talking smack to kids.
Eating too much shit.
I don't want to talk to you again.

I'm not your mom, so don't try to suck on my tits.
And don't fuck with me kid.

Anarchy

Who is bathing in yellow street light,
drinking alcoholic juice from a plastic bottle?
No one who shaves daily.
No one who eats fucking yogurt for breakfast.
No one who bathes in water.

Nearly forty now?
Is someone keeping count?
Come from nothing go to nothing.
Nothing comes from nothing,
and in the middle, it's mostly cold, vomit, sweat and dog hair.

Is anarchy a god, or a crippled whore?
If the gears of society stopped tomorrow,
and the fat man quit spitting out crumbs,
would you curl up and die?
Or would you get nutrients chewing rocks and dirt?

Bukowski's Sun

I've been singing in public,
and drinking on weekdays.

Now weeping to love songs,
by melancholy poets.

Now turning th'other cheek,
and punching in noses.

Eschewing self pity,
I'm standing dumb, and ill-composed.

Bukowski's sun must be raging again
because I'm rending my clothes.

Spikey Stuff

Squishy stuff gets spikey
but only when I look.

I'm checking the time
and trying the lightswitch.

If I am sleeping then
I can mold the clay.
Am I molding it already?
Is it molding me?

I go to the consel to find out.

One button lights up the other
and that one lights up the first.

How can I turn them both off?