You betta recognize!
Write these things
In the forefront of your head
And criticize later
When you have no clue
What you were thinking
If you dare.
Open the floodgate
Of the pen to the paper
And be damned the results
When, for years, being careful
Begat reams of blank paper
And the idea you can’t anymore.
Believe and stroke;
Think Cat’s arched back
And silky hair throwing sparks,
Altogether, the choir of legacy
Something bright, worthwhile
The curtains of the show that went on.
Go now and learn;
The process never ends.
Go now and teach;
This is not an option.
You are the realization
Of the hopes and dreams of your parents
As they were theirs.
This is the way it has always been;
This is the way it shall be again.
To the children you will be perfect,
And you shall fall from grace.
You will be crucified for believing in yourself.
You will be denounced for telling the truth.
You will be taken to the temple
And tempted, seduced, and pressured.
Let your minds be your own,
Let your hearts be winged;
Lead your lives,
Don’t let your lives be led.
Lost like your keys:
I don’t know how I got here,
Or if I told you
How I got here,
Would you believe?
Looking for my suitable pocket,
Reading the classified ads:
“Secret Garden going bad —
Must have proper key to lock it”.
I’ve hated myself for so long
for other people
other opinions, other lives:
here goes my hair —
look in the mirror,
watch your steely blue eyes wink:
lighthouses to steer ships by.
Bring them home.
Home is the sailor,
home from the sea,
and the hunter,
home from the hill.
home to your heart.
Quit renting the space from yourself:
laugh and languish
with the rest of the apes called human beings.
Life is a dualism;
you are understanding
dum-dum balancing act of whatever.
Equilibrium is so nice.
So is the shift of the teeter-totter but
gain control,
remain under control;
O Captain, my Captain,
you are not yet cold and dead.
Breathe in and out,
live until the end.
It comes not from your hand;
it is not believed in your heart:
the sides of life and death
are one shot kamikaze missions:
one, then the other.
Enlighten the lighthouse.
Strengthen the beams of your winks.
Find meaning in living
to bank hard against the 100% house of death.
The Love comes:
a white ship,
a black frigate,
the swarthy faces of dream-lands sailors
set foot on the dry land
of your once-fertile imagination,
bearing gifts of gems and spices,
flowers silks and brocaded tapestries
unique to your mind and your magic —
so you trade them to the rest of the world.
These gifts are your giftedness;
these waves are your talents,
and when your life is lost,
you will trade no more in this heady marketplace.
Learn to be a good merchant of your wares,
a good businessperson,
a good man;
everyone barters and sings praise and stabs.
Be better: be the best
that your will and imagination can conceive,
then focus your lighthouse lantern
to illuminate,
to enlighten,
and to greater things to believe in.
a candle can
move its shadows
like the magic
of an angel
if you believe
that it might be so.
one word
one attempted
explanation
and it’s war
so I give up,
keep my mouth shut
and rot
from the inside
out.
page after page
of meaningless meaning
to myself
tonight
to forget tomorrow
to rewrite
tomorrow night.
Love is no longer
a good enough reason
made to bow to religion,
made to bow to science,
cheapened
and losing the battle
to the evolution of humankind
into the machines
they build,
the laws they build
to worship.
lost is the love of man
of woman
of children
and of God;
love is
the fountainhead
of meaning.
there is a love
for everything good:
if it is good,
then there is love.
some things that
have been found
to be good
are still used
but loveless,
lifeless,
perverted from
their original use
because
love is what
was original.
People treat themselves like natural resources
(yes we are as part of the ecosystem —
we can be useful)
but expenditure like the burning of a ton of coal
to light one lightbulb?
I ask if this is necessary;
there is a chorus of affirmatives
from the millions who know no better,
who know nothing else,
who bought and will buy again,
who sell this idea.
Accomplishment is one great feeling,
but conversion of a ton of coal,
folding your diploma of success
into the paper airplane of your resumé,
forwarded into the next office,
the next buyer’s grabbing hands
leaves little room for meaning besides
fleeting appreciation and a closetful
of dusty awards that mean nothing.
A rusty mailbox doesn’t care if it rusts;
frogs don’t care where they croak from
or where they croak to,
or where they croak.
Life doesn’t seem to care
scientifically
where it is going.
But I disagree —
Something knows and always has known,
and it watches
and has its own opinion.
God is dead or at best
holds appointments on Sundays,
priests just do their jobs;
it is a profession: their work.
God or magick or belief
is no longer a requirement
for happiness or success.
I’m going to be married.
Sometimes I think it’s soon,
sometimes far away.
A quick decision?
The right one? Will we last?
Will we continue to be happy?
It all has to be waited for
and seen through –
there is no substitute,
there is no guarantee
that anyone can fully trust.
Love is a leap, a stumble, a fall;
a miraculous cartwheel
like you knew you could do it.
It seems to all be founded on
a paradox for humankind:
it’s all having to do with belief,
intangible, iirrational, immeasurable.
A human trait, regardless of
analytical lines, drawn to dissect
the whole of existence.
Belief unifies, explains on a different level
than we are accustomed to.
Our brains, our intellects are linear
and thus draw lines, cutting things
into pieces to chew on and examine
with precision.
The reunification after the repast
comes from belief – a gamble
on odds that have been thoroughly weighed.
And I believe
that I am going to be married
happily ever after.
I’m looking at myself
in the mirror and wondering
who the fuck I am –
wire-rim glasses, two day old growth of beard;
cigarette dangling from my lower lip.
FUCKING POETRY – I’ve been gone so long,
writing to myself, watching
my pen bleed from word to word
across the page,
tasting every letter,
thinking every penstroke: the speed of poetry.
And fuck it if it’s not – it’s mine:
my thoughts, my wisdom, my reminders, and my beliefs.
Soon, the anger manifests in obscenity
and thinking of destruction and Godzilla,
not caring, not feeling anything but
pinpricks in my feet from stepping on rooftop antennae.
Flying like a bird, a beast, a leap
from a cliff, to die, to live, to believe
in myself and my vomit, my eyes,
my power to change myself, thus the world.
My wildfire magick of angels and cataclysm,
comedy, tragedy, hope, lightning flying
from fingertips and pen nibs.
It’s all the beauty of the plumbing behind the sink.
yes I write poetry, I’m a poet
and I can’t crawl in bed with you
when I’m hurting;
my heart was shattered –
a wine stemmed glass on the freeway
a sheet of glass and a baseball
a face of a clock thrown to the pavement
into slivers
silver slivers
shivering silver slivers
and I can only think of
you lying on my bed believing
breathing your belief
that it will be OK
in the morning,
my friends outside
thinking that I’m OK
or will be that way
when I sober up
in the morning;
parents, separate, so far away
missing each other and still
hoping for me
to cure insanity
and be happy
with a world full of me.
angels never think that they are flying
when they really are –
but they know and wonder
when they look how far they’ve come –
they know that they’ve been trying –
they did, and have been,
because they have believed some.
I want so much to believe
in love that can be touched
and felt: something I need
to glue together all my heart.
each time I fall into that trap,
the sweetened chute of love,
some part of me can hear the snap
of metal jaws that slowly close and lock.
each time I fail another relationship,
a chisel chips another piece of meat,
a child steals another boardgame piece,
another chance for happiness thrown out
my throne of belief is whittled away,
the arms and legs are all but kindling now
and who would want such damaged merchandise
but in a lonely corner of an attic in your house.
you’re going to scream at me
but I’m chanting I can take it
throwing words like
broken mirror pieces of me
beating the pinata of my disguises
but I’m chanting I can take it
breaking accusations over my head
scalding me with tears
that I never wanted to bring to you
on the silver platter
I thought would do you good.
the stars I plucked
to put on your brow
have rotted and turned into
pumpkin seeds;
it was my sleight of hand
that placed them there
and your desperate want to believe me.
now you’re a whirlwind
of shattered stained glass.
I’m chanting I can take it.
one
all these slot machines are screaming at me,
hurling forth these awful noises
like upright pinball machines amplified
and winking with infernally fueled lights,
glowering metal goblins hunkered in military rows.
zombies run them, magnetized to the pull-bars.
coin after coin after coin fed like morsels
to squat and greedy quadripalegics
to be digested in square stomachs,
vomited occasionally into aluminum bins designed
to deluge the immediate area with tinny sound.
the only chairs in Vegas are the stools in front of slots,
the seats around the tables and the high chairs at the bars.
there they go – horrible shrieks and sirens,
running dark-suited security guards
and the beaming house manager congratulating, congratulating
someone lucky enough to give a slot the shits.
night and day rows of rolling eyes and gaping mouths,
so many tiki idols to pray to with offerings of silver.
miracles, healings, wishes granted often enough to other people
to make you believe. over your shoulder,
someone with a wheelbarrow of quarters
is smiling smugly before she’s taxed,
so you turn to your personalized priest
and confess, confess, confess;
give your money to the Church of Las Vegas.
two
you are nothing without neon stripes
surrounded with millions of scarecrow lightbulbs.
it’s a neighborhood gone gaga with Christmas lights;
the competition is too apparent, so flashy –
each hotel, forty floors of cement and steel supermodel,
the strip a catwalk for these gaudy flamingos
belching forth the illusions of winners,
fireworking electrical energy through millions of neon lacerations,
igniting the sky with an unnatural aurora.
each casino like a sick-to-its-stomach smiling Buddha,
pulling people in through its gilded belly-button
to explore the convolutions of intestines packed
with other gaping gamblers praying and dazed,
being digested in the bowels of Las Vegas.
the streets are the most wholesome places of normalcy;
there the garbage isn’t hidden, or snatched up
by a look-quickly-both-ways costumed employee
with a silver handled scooper and a platinum broom,
a golden smile tacked on like a nametag –
part of the uniform – in the streets
the honking of cars is sanity;
the people who live from their shopping carts are sane
because they have no money to spend.
these streets are thronged every night,
poverty illuminated by the neon lights.
a bottle of wine and a sunset,
a beach a place to sit;
this is what I’d like to do
with you to believe.
I believe you can summon dolphins
and that you’re a spirit, an angel.
I know of our fears of demons
and of blue bathroom windows,
ouiji boards and my piano playing.
I live to see you cry and argue
and almost break: then
there are my arms for comfort,
my tongue for talking and my ears
for listening and understanding.
I’ll catch you from harm
by falling against you at the same time;
we’ll teeter but we won’t topple.
all of the sunsets are painted on a canvas
big enough to share: the sky
– and I’d like to share it with you.
I am still here;
encased in steel,
frozen in flesh;
I am still here.
the I, the me, and the one and only:
Michael, an Angel, this quality,
definitely the most beautiful man
regardless of position and opinion.
building and building my building,
my self: a tower of faith in feelings.
I’ve mortared each brick and laid each beam,
chosen the colors, welded the seams,
sweated past tears, made real my dreams.
I have constructed my cherished monster
and wobble like a weeble but I don’t
fall
down.
I doubt and I die
every day
sometimes I cry
and fade away,
but I’m always stuck with myself
so I’ve chosen to stick it out
until the morning after.
I’ve got to strip and scrub and look in the mirror
I get misunderstood and filthy bad-mouthing myself;
the more I scrub the more I bleed, feeling clearer –
addicting, this hurting and cleaning myself.
in that soulless mirror
is my only true friend
and he’s true as far as you believe him.
weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.
I won’t scream anymore, I won’t make a sound
on finding my construction falling apart
snapping cables in the storms of my heart.
there is nothing that can ever take me away
I’ve done too much damage already.
twenty-one years old, a missile heaven-sent
and where god has thrown me I’ve made my own dent
to sit in and scowl or wave to my stars
as they streak by in the night, fireflies in jars.
as a man, I have searched for Quality, I think
in the smoke of my pipe-bowl,
sometimes mistaking it for “truth”;
I find it in the wind that catches my clothing.
as I’ve grown, I have wanted to love
so freely that it was change to a zillionaire:
giving without thinking of the response,
or of a response, or of that response.
as I’ve wanted I have built myself
into the most fragile sturdiness –
the only hurting comes from myself
and what I choose to believe.
so nothing happened between us.
is that what you believe?
is it easy to forget me?
is it easy just to leave?
I don’t want your sympathy.
I don’t know if you lie when you tell me
that you really love me.
what do I believe?
I don’t want your sympathy.
don’t stay if you really don’t want to.
you’ve got to tell me,
what should I believe?
do you think this is fair?
is this what I deserve?
you came crying to me,
and I’m the one who gets hurt.
(chorus)
iIm trying to blame myself.
you give me nothing to trust
while all the dreams of your love
crumble into dust.
(chorus)
I sag into my bonds,
bound to this wooden chair
with water from my eyes
six inches deep on the floor.
I feel all alone on a ship
gently rocking, back and forth,
water rolling, sighing
from bulkhead to bulkhead.
my head is down
and my hair is in my face but
if I was to look up,
my pupils would birth stars;
they would burn their way to the sky.
my hands are tied with
my own intestines, wetly coiled;
every movement
wrenches my stomach
in dizzy circles, hollow
like an airplane ride.
the chair holds me up,
gives me something to be tied to,
roots me to the deck; an anchor.
my mind hurts from
holding these stars,
squeezing my eyes shut and bearing
the sting of gas
leaking through my eyelids.
sails snap in my ears;
I grow a mast for a spine,
grasping handfuls of air
through canvas fingers.
I grow old and feel my hull
rotting as it surges
through these black waters.
I grow very tired from dreaming
of the sound of surf
on rocks, a shore.
tired from creating all this magic
for no one to see.
below, I flash open my eyes
and stand forth from the chair,
wet bracelets hanging
from my pale chafed wrists,
and I climb slowly to the salt air
of the deck of my ship.
I balance on the railings,
ignoring the spray of rain and sea,
and the call of oblivion
in the depths of the ocean,
my mother. finding strength
after strength after strength and
whittling them into kindling,
like so much driftwood.
teetering on the edge of falling
from the railing into myself
forever, I like being here:
I am myself — I have nothing but me
and my starry eyes and
my wonderful rotting ship,
intestines around my hands
and an emptiness in my stomach.
there are no more tears to cry
in the hold of the ship
for the toys I have lost
when I was younger,
refusing to grow up,
to grow old.
nothing can destroy
my beliefs; without them,
I go. I would let all the stars
that I have created
stream to the skies,
shrieking for me,
for what will become of me,
a bag of bones, a sack of skin.
I remember my stars;
they will remember me,
whispering my name
through the nighttime.
I talketh.
I open my Mouth.
I speaketh unto You
assembled here tonight.
the Lord cometh
in the Guise of a great Reptile.
Fire he does breath,
and with Blood does he quench his Thirst.
I tremble in humble supplication
unto the Wyrm that does prescribe
the manner that each shall Perish.
Enlightenment shall come as Fire,
Salvation shall approach as hopelessness,
and thou shalt be Judged
by thy Belief and the pain
of your Fiery demise.
He cometh and I speaketh unto you:
He cometh in the Guise of a great Reptile.
I wish you a dinosaur and a penny
I wish you enchiladas and dolphins
I wish you love and chap stick
I wish you coconuts and grassy hills
I wish you an earring and pencil lead
I wish you whipped cream and blood
I wish you happiness and pen ink
I wish you a treehouse and Apple Jacks™
I wish you blue and green and orange
I wish you beer and Lemonheads™
I wish you dreams and brown leaves
I wish you words and squirt guns
I wish you chewing gum and piranhas
I wish you luck and three bird feathers
I wish you beef jerky and yo mama
I wish you would and brass
I wish you wings and belief
I wish you days and several candles
I wish you toenails and bobsleds
I wish you gold chains and thermostats
I wish you negligees and carpeting
I wish you a bag of marbles and bones
I wish you the stars and a flower
I wish you incense and Rolaids™
I wish you a Twix™ and a pipe wrench
I wish you courage and money
I wish you a huge slobbering puppy dog with a big tongue
I wish you Jello™ and time
I wish you wood grain and shivers
I wish you letters and Coca-Cola™
I wish you.
the universe is more fragile than you think.
let your billiard ball physics take note of it.
Things just outside paper thin partitions;
madness overwhelms the left-side brain
when the Right is given free reign.
don’t try to explain away the phenomenon —
your senses will rarely betray you:
listen, smell, touch, believe.
patterns are infinite, on and on,
beyond those boundaries we teach;
deafness we teach blindness we
handicap those who are gifted.
beware that which is just sleeping
the sleep of the age-old which may
be mistaken for death, the calling
of nothing. even awake
we sleep, dormant and helpless.
in dreams we pass away for a time
to roam the realms of memory;
dark forests of fears and toadstools,
a thousand and one nights I have
lain awake counting spiders’ webs,
drinking water that glazes frozen pools.
the pulse that lies beneath
the rough-edged bark of a weathered tree
to the precarious balance of an acorn wreath.
never are you quite alone enough
to say that no-one’s watching.
lovely and cool, pink and minty stuff,
quell my queasing stomach rough.
calm the bilish oceanic waves
which slosh within gastronomic caves.
unleash thy pow’rful soothing mood
upon my restless and acerbic food;
bestill the tides which yaw and heave
it is in you that I trust and believe.
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