Amidst Economy

Children as backpacks
and eyes trained on quantity.
Welcome.
Has anybody asked
what that means?
Sure they have,
every time they acted for it.

For some reason Roger Bannister
comes to mind--with visions of the
levee breaking and everything.

We usually get what we truly want--
and of course small desire doesn't
count. To want is to need for the
soul.

Focus.
Don't over-extend your resources.
Patience.
Mind-bending the right way comes
in time.

Let go of that which you think you know
in order to learn the sound of truth.

Games

Do it.
Seriously.
The only thing
stopping you is you.

Play with life.
Risk yourself.
It'll be fun letting go
and falling into nothing.
Remember to
wear a smile
and keep it playful.
Otherwise seriousness
will get involved.

Who fucking cares if she rejects you?
Another she is just around the corner.

This is what you were meant for.
Use those language skills now boy,

before time forgets you,
and you're left wondering
what it maybe would have
been like.

Remember the beauty of the body.
For a time, it's time to appreciate
all those bodies you've been pining
after for so long.

Don't be afraid.
The universe is stillon your side.
This is exactly
what you're supposed to be doing.

Find it.
Do it.
Enjoy what you give each other.

Momentary pleasure:
moment by moment.

Don't be an asshole.
Don't lie.
Continue to be honest
and faithful and truthful,
but
do it with a side dish of fun.

Go love yourself for a while
inside the body of another.

Pulsing

Blood.

 

The threshold through which

the four-fold passes,

becoming something other:

 

that which draws seemingly

incompatible power

to a unified conglomeration.

 

Containing all that it ought to contain,

needing nothing more than what it has,

self-sustaining, self-reliant, self itself,

and helpful only in the sense that it IS,

 

can that which was never meant to be explained

find an explanation in things as useless as words?

Can that which was meant for perpetual mystery

find explication in worthless language expression?

 

Having never before seen them in the wild,

in the last week I have seen two preying mantises.

The first was on a low mountainside,

and it was desperate that it shouldn’t be seen

by the likes of me and so struck a pose of perfect

stillness in the hopes that I’d move on.

The second was suspended four feet high,

trapped in the silken snare of some kind of spider

and struggling, hard, to get itself free.

And freely did it fall.

 

From freedom,

to struggling for freedom,

and again to freedom,

this is the life of the mind of man.

Coloring You

Funny, the decisions we can make

when we aren’t making decisions:

chartreuse charlatans dancing across fresh stages

cannot combat uncomfortable realities with

their theoretical bathtub myths.

 

Aquamarine quality time sitting astride the mare of the day,

fresh plum wine comes pumping up from nowhere and

we feast on the fragrant remains of this cobalt catastrophe.

 

Sunset comes so unexpectedly to weary eyes.

And in it can be seen such perfect purples

and indignantly precise indigos that I weep.

 

I weep in remembrance of the saffron sleep

I slept as you curled up beside me.

 

Your breath, the smell of your skin on my tongue

and tepid waters of significance we seem to swim in

congeal, almost jokingly, in a cosmic scene

fit only for alizarin Ajax and Tecmessa.

 

My moroseness is not any more than it ought to be

given the utter importance of my impotence of now.

Your milky back camber yearning, urging me on.

Guidance now is given only to the godless submissive.

 

More Dreams

For three nights running I have had the strangest dreams. 

For three nights running I have awakened far too early

as a result of the strangest dreams I have ever had—

and this is precisely why I shouldn’t be allowed

to dream. 

 

You see,

the first one was the first-ever recurring dream I’ve ever had,

and was overflowing with magic:

 

we’re talking about a dreamscape that

includes ever single landscape I have

ever seen, and perhaps a few I haven’t,

all viewed from the top of a hill where

I am an apprentice wizard to a rather

bumbling Merlin, a la Sword in the

Stone, and somehow I am the link

that makes movement between the

world of the magical Merlin-house

and the world of suburbia that it sits

directly on top of—such that should

I find myself driving down a road

I can see both of these weird worlds:

 

one out of the right eye

and

one out of the left eye.

 

Meanwhile, Merlin’s lessons only serve to remind me

that magic is a bonus in life, and it ought to be treated

with respect and humor:

“Never abuse, Mac, or it might wind up abusing you.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

Speaking of “Sirs”…

(and for a guy who just generally doesn’t dream

I certainly manage to have some awkward ones.)

 

Imagine a sultry South American somewhere—

away from the bright lights and big cities—

where there are rustic old hotels with balconies of rotting wood

and bars for which the only appropriate moniker would be saloon.

 

Now, inject into this scene my truncated family

composed primarily of my mother, myself and

my father’s father—a motley crew to be sure.

 

I don’t know why,

and I only report it because it’s a fact:

my grandfather went mad

and people were suddenly shooting at him.

 

As a matter of fact, I distinctly remember going into camera mode

and following him down as he jumped from the balcony of our

hotel and hit the ground running—and he unceremoniously

caught two bullets directly in the chest. 

 

Not that this could stop him. 

He cried out:

“I’m American!

You’re gonna have to do better’n that!”

 

Whereupon the invisible gunman put

two more in his face, sending his brain through the back of his head and splattering it all across the window

of an intercity bus—the old-school curvy kind with no air conditioning… you know the one—that had been parked by the sidwalk.

 

My mother’s look of horror I will never forget.

Nor will I forget how she cocked her head to the side,

looked at the window,

spoke to herself in a near whisper and said:

 

“What a curious shade of yellow.”

 

That makes three mornings running

I’ve awakened in cold sweats,

way too early to be ok,

and lain awake wondering for far too long:

 

what could it possible all mean?

 

For some reason,

the in-sink-erator of my mind

is working again,

or malfunctioning again (however

you want it put),

and it’s ever so slightly scary. 

Love Song (Neruda Moment)

There was no moon in the sky:

only the sound of the rain in the night, 

only the sight of me holding you tight,

only the touch of the wind when I kissed your eyes.

The rain fell down softly outside

and I pulled you so close that I was inside,

Feeling your heart skip as lighting flashed by

I tasted your soul as the thunder made us cry.

Trapped in your arms I don't want to be free.

Lost in your eyes, please God, no one find me.

'Cause I'd tear a hole thru space and time

just for your body to be next to mine.

You are my Neruda moment.

Here's to my time with you,

and here's to all those things we do.

Here's to the way your eyes grow and flash

just like the night,

that night,

I was inside your laugh.

A park pagoda washed in a summer rain.

You and I locked in a lover's embrace.

I imagine some images won't ever leave me,

and this image leaving me would probably kill me.

Trapped in your arms I don't want to be free.

Lost in your eyes, please God, no one find me.

'Cause I'd tear a hole thru space and time

just for your body to be next to mine.

You are my Neruda moment.

Body of my woman I AM in your grace.

My thirst, my desire, my favorite name!

Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flows

and weariness follows and the infinite grows.

A Walk Home

Two blown-over trees

and a fire

on my walk home

make me believe the world

is up to something,

but being

positive is positively

 

impossible.

 

I suppose I should explain, also,

that I quit smoking yesterday—and

haven’t relapsed with even a single

puff—and have been fasting all

day

 

(which may have something to do with the significance

I feel);

but when you get right down to it, so many things seem

to be

going on in so many directions of existence that it is not

in me

to be able to catalogue and understand them all: with an

almost

impossible speed they seem to be running at me at break

neck

speed.

 

And I come home to find two trees blown down

on an unspecial day—there was no horribly heavy

wind—and a fire that started out of nowehere—

with nobody around to mind it.

 

Can they possibly be related?

And all this after the most significant ten

days of my recent history.

 

Or is it just mattering residue?

 

“You can find meaning in anything if you look hard enough?”

That fucked me up for a long time,

but then I realized:

if you never look for meaning

you’re certainly bound to never find any.

Avoidance

Right now, I know there are things

which I ought to be doing:

eating has lost some of its flair lately,

but this is a thing that

probably needs to transpire pretty soon,

 

a string of my guitar has decided—

unceremoniously I might add—

that it would feel better in

a state of snappedness

than in its rather

more useful

form of

fullness,

 

there are so many words that need to be shot

from the slingshot of my mind

that I’m finding it difficult to wrangle them in

and choose the smoothest ones

for the appropriate writing project at the time,

 

plans probably ought to be made

for the evening

as this afternoon washing from the gods

can’t last forever,

 

and there are always clothes to wash,

 

but,

somehow,

 

all I want to do

is write a poem

and experience

the freedom of

my mind in the

words coming

out in front of

me on a blank

background.

 

It's creation to avoid…

but what?

 

Augustine’s Confesions/Futurama/Mad Max/Flowers

As I walked through

Lake Park, Ochang today

I found that the flowers

emitted a fragrance that was

just for me:

 

amidst its cornucopial

iridescence—visually

stimulating to be sure

--there was something

 

I couldn’t touch.

 

welcome to the world of the weird.

 

Tonight I discovered

that eternity is merely

presence—in the sense

that by presence I mean

to say the present.

 

Augustine says that the present is the perpetual

presence of the eternal:

the present is the perpetual abode of the almighty.

 

Between time and matter and creation

there is the consideration that

no one loves you because you’re tiny

and made of meat.

 

Why don’t we just simply eat each other…

both literally and metaphorically…

because that seems easier…

 

and then again…

 

chalky and unpleasant love is

barely love at all, right?

 

This might not be the best time but,

I find floral fragrance something of

an awe-inspiring situation.

 

Who is great?

Poetic Picture Time

This picture is poetry because there is no way to properly explain who these people are and what they mean to me and how they all ended up in the same place without me--given the diversity of where they come from.  

Ponder Well

Ponder well thy own immortal soul,

lest you find it wanting.

Ponder well thy possibilities

lest you miss opportunities.

 

Do not dare notice nothing—in it you may find everything.

Don’t dare notice anything—you might miss something.

And don’t just be anybody—go ahead and be somebody.

Further don’t be everybody—then you risk being nobody.

 

All dualities contain within themselves

definitions for opposites:

good is that which is not evil,

evil is that which is not good.

 

I make mountains of your molehills in my mind,

expanding them beyond what they mean in the world

to take in their meaning of what they mean to me,

and in this what you mean to me.

 

The horizon breaks next to me and I can

see the beauty of it in onyx

surrounded by jade, surrounded

by ivory, surrounded by bronze.

 

Thy immortal soul and mine are inextricably linked:

deny it if thou wouldst, but you lie—

both to thineself and I.

 

Complications arise in soul ponderings,

doubtless it is: they must.

Complications arise when thought

reaches beyond itself to find itself.

 

Ponder well that loving soul of thine,

and pray you never find it wanting.

And ponder well thy perceptions

of what it means to be without,

because understanding these means

understanding all—

 

and I defy you to understand the meanings behind

inextricably linked souls because there is no way to

understand: we can only ponder well.

 

Ponder well thy immortal soul.

Lines Composed at Waegu Quiz Night: MJs

And I’m left wondering:

 

“What am I?

That I should be

so complicated?

What am I?

That I should have

so many needs?

What am I?

That I live in a world

where I can’t see

anything real?

 

My narcissism knows no bounds:

all the songs I wrote for you,

I really wrote for me.

 

My paranoia has a life of its own:

they’re always out to get me,

trap me, find me guilty,

for crimes of consciousness

I am only barely aware of.

 

She is an untouchable ideal,

and I already understand futility:

stuck, paralyzed, fuck you Joyce.

 

Deep as a puddle,

wide as a skinny tie,

and yes, I know you’re beautiful

but you are not for me.

Only the finest ingredients:

everything me and not

me… I think.”

People Who Ride Along the Boundaries

People who ride along the boundaries

are necessarily people in motion—

they are, after all, riding.

 

In this case, the obvious ontological query is answered:

“What are they doing?”

“Riding.”

But is this case there is also explicit organization:

“Where are they doing it?”

“Along the boundaries.”

 

The thing about boundaries is—

unless you’re a cell wall—

they are kind of ambiguously

organized.

 

Think about walking the borderline of a country or state

that isn’t altogether worried about the traffic.

Can you imagine that you walk the borderline

precisely, continuously, contiguously, constantly

closely.  Or is swerving more likely?

And how can you tell where you’ll be at any given time?

 

Being along the border is an understanding of change

and its complete permeation of humanity’s perfection.

 

Completion of perfection a human cannot be static,

for then our complete perfection can only be death.

 

No, our complete perfection,

while existing,

is precisely that –ing stuck to the back of

the infinitive:

to exist:

exist-ing.

 

Perfection—

like truth, like life—

is only the process of becoming

something-or-other… or

maybe just

other.

 

Perfection is riding along the borders

of life

of love

of existing

of existence

of people riding

of truth and reality

of consciousness as such

of totally unrelated sentences

of qualitatively different realities

of the understanding that perfection

is people in motion.

 

A Hard Night’s Day

Wandering through the mindspace of eternally infinitesimal instants,

I find lightning bolt lashes of insight

into what I

am really thinking about.

 

They come and then they’re gone:

sub-conscious decisions I don’t really know I’ve made.

 

Existing as the ephemera of my reality,

yet simultaneously as enduring decisions made,

they haunt my waking dream

because of my conscious rejection of cautiously proceeding

to make them manifest.

 

Why must we be built with the capacity to hide

essential information from ourselves?

 

No, that is a ridiculous question.

What is it inside us that necessitates the structure

of hide-ability?

 

From a purely technical standpoint

it’s a necessity for accomplishment

and the understanding that there're

some things that would never be in

the realm of accomplishability if it

weren’t for the fact that we hide its

reality from ourselves.

 

We hide the fact that our jobs are merely a means to an end

because otherwise we would understand that there are other

ways to make ends meet.

 

We hide our unhappiness in our current situation in order to

maintain homeostasis because otherwise we’d realize there

are other ways to maintain.

 

There is always another way.

Keep that in mind.

Or don’t.

It only barely matters.

 

Don’t be afraid of what’s hidden inside you.

Seek it out.

Seek and seek and seek and seek and seek and seek and seek and seek,

knowing you will never find it.

Yes: A Song

Sometimes the memories of we

remind me why I had to leave.

And sometimes, they chop like an axe,

leaving me with just one thing I have to ask:

What do I do with all the times

I laid there with you, and called you mine?

What do I do with all the places

I will only and always see your face?

All the times my soul cried out:

"Yes! Yes! You're finally the one.

Yes! Yes! The race has been won.

I've searched all my life, just to find you."

Because now you're gone, so 

what, what do I do? 

Guess I say yes.

Been drinkin' a lot these days

just tryin' to cope with the rage,

and writing for reasons I can't understand

songs about how I'm still holding your hand.

So, what do I do when I reach for your hand

and find that my hand has nowhere to land?

And what do I do with a soul that won't stop

making me see you and making me drop

to my bare knees and say

"Yes! Yes! You're finally the one.

Yes! Yes! The race has been won.

I've searched all my life, just to find you."

Because now you're gone, so 

what, what do I do? 

Guess I say yes.

I don't know where on earth you are,

and I don't think you took it this hard,

and you were always stronger than me,

but right now I've never felt so weak.

I saw your face in the mirror last week

in your cotton nightgown, just staring at me.

I turned to say, "Baby, come on, gimme a kiss,"

and in half a split second, you turned into mist.

So what do I do when I'm haunted by you

and see pieces of you in all that I do?

What do I do with a soul wracked with pain

and remembers beauty when it sees your face

in my dreams and says

"Yes! Yes! You're finally the one.

Yes! Yes! The race has been won.

I've searched all my life, just to find you."

Because now you're gone, so 

what, what do I do? 

Guess I say yes.

Spring

What is this new beginning that I am?

Daily and hourly and perpetually catapulting me into new air

is a force I cannot comprehend.

 

Brow-beaten by significance and ponderous

wonderment, we exist in anguish of what we can be

to the point of paralysis.

 

DAMN YOU JOYCE!

 

Really, it is consciousness’ fault:

because it tempers the way we see the world,

we see the world through a totality that can never be

simply what it is—

 

it must always be other,

existing in a different timeplaceperson.

 

In love we want completion, comprehending fully its doomed vainglorious effort.

In money there can never never never be enough: there’s always more to get.

In sex there is the being-inside-the-other, but physical intrusion cannot be sustained.

In philosophy things will always already be out of date: otherwise philosophy dies.

 

Beginnings are always a question that starts with what,

and we are beginnings every day:

sometimes I want out of my head,

and sometimes I want in.

 

“There is a spectre haunting the world today”

—and every day—

and it is what we could be. 

 

“There is nothing to prevent the consciousness from making a radically new decision in its way of being”

—nothing but itself—

because it’s afraid of new beginnings.

 

Haunt ON!

Haunt On!

Hunt ON!

Hunt On!

Beginning become me

as I become beginning.  Amen.

Fear is the greatest evil in the world.

What is this existence I am?

Carefully, cautiously,

I walk into observation.

What are the things I am seeing?

Can they ever just be what they are?

Is it appropriate to ask questions in a poem?

Or should the poem be

the question in itself?

 

Curvaceously, the world presents herself to me as an

other to be ravaged

caressed

stroked

blessed

poked

prodded

piked

and

lauded.

 

I must know.  I must know.  I must know.

There is no other road for this me that I have to be.

Go. Do. Be.

Actions reveal desires.

Only act, the future is unknowable.

I am what I am not, and I’m not what I am.

The things I know so far. 

That’s about it.

I don’t even think I know on which side my bread is buttered:

is it the top or the bottom there?

 

And so I must go about my project of ravagement

with a vigor as yet unrealized in the world.

I must go about my project of caressing,

with delicacy and tenderness.

I must go through and stroke and stroke and stroke,

until I have worn her through and can see inside.

and then I will bless her with perfumed

sacrifices and plates of ambrosia.

And I will poke her poke her poke her poke her

to see how much she can possibly stand.

I will go about my project of prodding,

precisely because I want her action.

I will pike her in every way I can:

leaving quickly and impaling.

And through it all my action will be with the project of

lauding the possibilities which I am as a result of my being in the world:

which are her.

A Burroughs-Gysin Cut-up

Place they acted from came

from their understanding that they knew wha

 

t is not located in excess

but in having a very clear conception of what you—

 

drinking a martini at 9am (gin: 20.00, olives: 3.00, Mary Poppins: free as a gift)

 

, at the very least, the session won’t be lasting all that long

and is largely based on how much you—

are capable of enduring.

 

The cold is always an endurance trial,

with day after day of icy arctic blasts attempting

to sway you into a more indoorsy type

 

to the pub and getting’ pissed up with his (or her) mates is a holiday I can get behind

 

for its

infinite probability.

 

Cogitations of existence's

essentially ephemeral

nature keep me company

climbing inclines, enjoying

gentle declines, and 

there's acceptance in my

 

start.

Because you cannot know

whether today will be 

your last opportunity to,

 

And then on an un-special day,

A realization:

 

“This is the day that lord has made,

I will rejoice and be glad in it,”

 

to emphasize:

A LOT

about excess and possessions and uselessness,

and I think we're at one of those spots ripe for

a full stop.

“This is the day that lord has made,

I will rejoice and be glad in it,”

to emphasize:

A LOT

about excess and possessions and uselessness.

O,

And then on an un-special day,

A realization: 

be 

your last opportunity to.

From their understanding that they knew what,

and 

there's acceptance in my

essentially ephemeral

full stop.

At the very least, the session won’t be lasting all that long

Because you cannot know

infinite probability.

Pissed up with his (or her) mates

climbing inclines, enjoying

whether today will be 

A LOT

of enduring, and 

there's acceptance in my

arctic blasts attempting

to sway you into a more indoorsy type

of those cogitations.

Drinking a martini at 9am

is a holiday I can get behind

A LOT

Because you cannot

think we're at one of those spots

with day after day of icy arctic blasts—

nature keep me company.

Place they acted from:

excess and possessions and uselessness.

Their understanding that they knew

The cold is always an endurance trial.

I think we're

A realization

attempting

to sway.

What Are We?

“What are we supposed to do with this?”

                        Perhaps that is the right question—at least

it has been seeming like the appropriate

                        question as of late—and finding the right

question is sometimes half the battle.

 

“Why?” has become seemingly more and more inappropriate,

if only because its implication is in the past—a thing that has

already happened.

 

The shift from the focus on the past to the focus on the future

with different methodological questions involving what and

how remind me of

 

style and Joyce and how it seemed like this is what sets art &

artists apart from the crowd.

 

Nobody cares why they do it until it becomes necessary from

a historical perspective and

 

they’re usually dead by then.

 

We are what we were,

not why we were.

We are what we will become,

not why we will become.

 

It all started a long time ago, see, when I realized I had

officially stopped questioning the motivation of my

roommates: I knew that the place the acted from came

from their understanding that they knew what was best for

them, and motivation is, realistically, the why? 

The only questions I ever had for them was about what they

did and how they went about doing it.

 

Why is important in its way,

but for me, I’m attempting

to move beyond metaphysics

and see the world through an

ontological framework—which,

for a guy whose major mode of

thinking has been actions reveal the

desires of the actor, is not a big step from

desire to asking, “What do you

want?” and “How do you go about

getting it?” 

 

Apparently I have been asking these questions

                        all along and simply not realizing what I was doing.

Apparently I have been wondering about what

                        and how for longer than I have even understood them.

Apparently I have been doing things I haven’t

                        understood, and that is essentially sublime, I think.

 

Right now I am channeling the sub-conscious, unworried

about the ramifications and repercussions of the words

flowing out of my mind and through my fingers: let

them come. 

 

What do they mean?

How are they being put together?