Thanks Given
ebb of mango in half moon
as a man between dusty walls
reclines the same way,
bedsheets rife with twisty blooms,
while his clock points
to coming hells
and unseen constellations.
dishes tower
stoic in the condo's kitchen,
and cups and effete turkey bones
sunken in the sink
soggy with shreds of flesh,
a carving knife stuck through.
=====================================
9/2/25... fixed typo
6/23/24 mods ..
11/17 .. removed "to be" after "dwell to long"
Resign
what could be more desperate
than a belt around the neck,
and the subzero of goodbyes,
and the failure, if someone cared.
it couldn’t just go on and on,
waiting for a slip,
and the unstoppable sense
that one is being sucked down,
swirled to drain away,
beneath a basin of daily rituals.
as if we even know what we are,
or why these roles, or the nature of the game.
trite jangles on a gamut of nerves,
far more numerous than piano strings.
love,
it sprints at full thigh,
but must leap, more than once,
the monster’s ditch,
and so loses, one by one,
its petal-like toes.
far too much keeps going on,
below the cheap magnetic shells,
down here in the nucleus.
===================
...
3/13/23 ... "know" replaces "knew" "are" replaces "were"
10/1/22 "the" replaces "a"
Change of Clime
a rattlesnake half dust
employs itself
as a lounge chair.
a few jays wilt
on electrical tethers.
no fusspot grackles
to gossip up the wires.
nothing blooms or flits.
sage plants beg for sauce.
heat whispers
but lizards have no ears.
above the crispy arroyo,
rusty with pummeled cars,
a vulture mistakes itself
for a curdled roach.
the absurd meekness all,
even the humans tamed,
docile as eluvia
prostrate under foothills
of simmering char.
============================
12/2/23 ... not a very accessible poem, some mods
10/1 "Clime" replaces "Climate"
9/25 massive changes
The Statement
our time must be spent
hiding from the statement.
the statement is absurd and nude.
life is not nude.
layers protect who we are.
our layers define us
and must be fashionable.
don’t
think too much.
others have worse problems than you.
stay quiet so they can fake it.
the past, you say?
the past is an unworn locket.
no one can open the locket and not be horrified
by their own neglect.
don’t
try to be better.
are you ready to cry
until the tears cleanse?
tears can scald
as bad as battery acid.
tears are not cures.
truth is not a key.
it won't get through.
==================
Psychic
song in a sigh, key in a crow’s foot,
dram on the tongue
when clues spike the nose.
a nuzzle of a moment once, long ago,
when pleasure skirted a nipple and
fingertips strummed some unknown nape
to climb summits of breath.
so many of them,
such frolics and flocks of heart,
frivolous with the vulgar and
the mercurial, such haggles at
the soul-level under
herringbone orbits and
clouds of Geminis
and all those other masked cog-pixies
in an anti-clockwork, hope-bent universe.
so many mishmashes
of tearful sense-impressions.
who could assuage them all,
or offer naked assurance?
what purpose this jungle of
self-winding flypapery, buzzy beggary?
so many sins.
and yet so many of them mean nothing at all.
illusions that become building blocks in towers
of moebius-strip shame.
nothing. nothing at all.
nothing to do save sever the threads, go blank,
dispel the meddlesome back to their wanders irretrievable,
back to where they wander to fritter and fret
so obsessed with crime.
======================================
10/26/25 .. awful poem, ... tried to fix
6/23/24 brutally chopped up and refigured
12/24/22 lots of mods ... sad... still not right
9/27 "such" replaces "their"
9/17 ... desperate continuous edits...
9/16 ... more changes to this product of mania
9/16 ... changes continue to the original abomination ...
9/16 major changes to original poem, tossing out whole sections ... gutting the rest ... absolutely awful poem to have posted ... might still be awful, can't really say, brain so muddled
Polar
in a closet,
a place where the curled
reach up from a valley in a psalm,
hollow cloth hangs above,
those crucified angels of wool,
effigies of last defense.
no mediation for the curled,
here in anxiety’s womb,
this valley in a psalm,
so inky, this night,
where lack-of-movement
stalks movement,
where lack-of-movement prowls.
it alone stalks, until dawn,
when a thought might think
is the same as the door.
======================================
10/14/24 ... mods
Depression isolates. But isolated time is time with the gods.
Winds To Ninety
whips flog howls
sacrificed on a hectic altar,
which somersaults to guzzle swallows of invisible guts.
it's a vanishing magic of busted bursts;
a flip-flopping hurtle of a toad's wild ride,
mocking moon, season and garden
with the abominable doppler
of an irremediable moan.
gusty in the lush graveyard,
once a copse,
ghosts spray and bark,
no check on their unclothed rant,
the savage sacrilege of their cacophonic philippic.
enemy of the calm,
enemy of the conformed,
enemy of the praised, the rectified, the vogue,
the ghosts fleck, swipe, spasm, and slither,
torn from shrubs bent as humble as grass;
torn from trees petrified yet splintered
by the miserable illogical tears
of a stabbing, dying rain.
the windy wet curse
bites my face to inflict a lycanthrope lost:
fangs, muzzles, hackles,
stretching fake snarls into false hungers
to distort my once-human features,
now wicked before an arena of stormy gods,
cruel pantheons, lofty yet feral,
lunging on.
=======================
9/10 fixed typo ("bursts" replaces "burst")
9/9 ... really hard poem to work... edited phrases hours after posting... still bad...
Looking Back
the light
would’ve been dark in another place,
so many puny photons milling on the walls,
pawns bumping pawns,
a weightless glue of grey upon grey.
to zoom out, lens-style,
reveals just another cell,
another slice of planet in a district on a continent.
further still, waits the slapdash solar system,
and beyond that
a who-knows-whatness of dark matter and cosmos.
and the humans,
they serve as morsels
for the Gargantua that is this crazy comparmentalized game.
it all interconnects, somehow, if only in a poet's head,
this pandemonium of inputs and outputs
vomited from a broken moebius brain,
spokes within spokes of wheels within wheels
of fractious dendrite-choirs.
the poet, this i, this me,
i i i i
i
have decided that this lonely universe
has taken far too long to craft its most absurd beings,
the ones which it should force to ponder
how vicious and magnificent
it really is,
and show them
the way out.
======================================
Post Crash
life’s this-and-that's
come to an end,
down into a final tunnel,
sunlight’s edge,
where a single precise chop
plunges fate’s cleaver.
all at once
everything is embarrassed
and not fitting in,
weak as a whimper,
unable to travel or excel,
lonely in this forced self-
judgmental place,
where patience
dribbles pride into a bedpan.
it is now you
who speaks to ancestors,
you who conjures visions:
chimeras of carnal beasts
sinful of primal parts.
nothing else to do.
it is you who watches
the outside world blur
into tricks of charades,
puppets who would puppeteer,
yanking in a mutual harness so vast
no one commandeers it.
it is you
who no longer cares
about knots in the guts of social distress.
you who now feverish
makes love to a touchless spirit,
seeking more than anything
only her name.
nothing else to do.
and when the serene stills the circus,
there's no reward.
no god comes out to play. no cheers.
the world breeds on,
ruddy from laughter,
sobbing in anguish,
and everyone fails
to scrounge up some puny epitaph
for your fading name.
9/8 "her" replaces "their" ... wanted a female goddess theme, personal preference
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