Letting Go: An Exercise

Walking round in circles letting go of toddler dreams

And holding hands with empty-pocket wishes, I

kiss a girl with left handed strangeness and

Tell her lies like my Father used to tell.

There was something about the Moon and

Later stories of Vietnam that never came true and

Once he told of castles made of sand. 

I never understood that one...

Now, sitting in trees with grey opal cats, jazz cats

Whose jagged hats are alarmingly close to falling

Thousands of miles off (I don't think the country could bear it).

In the tree the sun sets like green fire on water and I

Remember the Brothers in black coats and chains who make the stuff.

The sun sets on the country and the cat's hats are still on so I sigh relief 

And send a stream of spit and urine into the wind.

It's an impolite gesture but it's the closest thing to laughing I can manage.

Later we came together under umbrellas like black mushrooms,

We sat in groups and tried Ouija without the board, sending

Love notes to dead wives and tearful apologies to the babies we couldn't keep,

And somewhere in it all I got through to Grandfather and he told me 

He was sorry for Dresden and all the Negroes too.

Later still, he appeared in a dream, a Thirties prizefighter in gold shorts

And we stood in the Jordan river while he explained my father's lies.

It had been some time and I'd managed to bury or decipher 

Or simply sit out the ones about the Moon and 'Nam...

'But the castles made of sand,' my Grandfather said 'are the silicon

Halls and waiting rooms, the opium dens of your generation,

The poisoned place where words and images, clouds of thought and 

A whole galaxy of bright ideas have begun to stagnate.'

'So find a clean slate and wake up!'

 

Contemptuous Old Bastard

Now that the War is over,

You've become a piece of furniture,

A sofa or a footstool and I'll use you.

I'll smoke my yellow cloudy cigars and

I'll shout my whiskey curses, 

Throwing rags and empty plates.

You'll shrink and turn into

Anything that I don't notice...

Anything at all.

But someday, when I'm wrinkled and thin

Like an old slipper, 

I'll notice my leathery hands and face

For the first time and I'll apologize.

More Comfortable

When no one is looking,

I suspect that parallel lines

Converge for secret meetings.

To plan, to plan! A secret

Scheme to bring the Universe down

I think. Yes! The architecture will

Collapse and the drunks and the laughers

Will reign, who have cast away the 

Geometry of rational mind

Long ago for something more comfortable.

Impotence

Sometimes I find myself

Awash in vibrational

Hum hum melody,

And my skin tightens,

The hairs on my neck

Reaching for outer orbit,

And I feel tears just

Below the surface.

And then I dress,

Slowly and with great concentration,

And I take tea with

My other.

Inconstance

Life as Libra has

Its ups and downs

But for you Darling,

I worry. 

Can you 

Handle me,

The scale?

Rabbit

In a dive the Rabbit said

"I'll transpose time today for

Yesterday 'till the dead

Undie and the

Laughers unlaugh themselves

To the tears that came before, and

The trees and the grass pull back

Into the Earth, the one full of

Shrinking people,

Younging people,

Shrieking like

Mad trains back

Towards

Birth."

 

This the Rabbit said. 

That Time I Wrote Howl or How I Learned To Do Things My Way

Who drops beats like bad acid in a crowd of rubber sunshine,

Who licks battery black from a hat,

Who tastes the burn on America's people, the one

the liars left.

Who feels a furnace heat on palms like ice,

Who rode wave upon wave of yesterday memory to get here and

Who didn't black out.

 

Who sank ships with lips like hotdogs down hallways and

Who wasn't sorry and

Who testified to crimes against the Now and Keepin' It Real, and

Who wasn't sorry for that either.

 

Who filled boxcars with ghost visions of '71,

Whose teeth are shades of lovers past and

Who won't change the sheets.

 

Who still believes in Substance D,

Who blasted Revelations to the tune of God Save Coca Cola

Who laughed all the way to Big Nurse and

Who laughed harder through lobotomy One, Two and Three

 

Until all that was left was

Step Right Up or How I Stole Tom Waits' Words

 

Step right up.

Herd through them

Turnstiles and

Step lively boy,

Step right up.

 

We got yellow slacks and

Newfangled antiques fresh

From China, ten cents apiece.

 

We got bootlegged rum and

Cigarettes and all the tools

The Devil'll ever need.

 

There're pretty girls with

Dead eyes and fake pockets and

Eyes made of glass for

Dead heads and empty sockets and

 

Step right up.

 

*Incredible scat beat*

 

Step right up.

 

Yeah that's right,

 

Step right up.

 

Babalabap bap.

 

Step right up.

What She Said...

 

I said "I want to

Get to know you," and

 

She said "Yo

That's dope."

 

Now we have a mortgage.

All That We Have

Can you disprove the

Distance between lies

And truth until all

That we have is

Grey grey grey

Skies and

Green eyes and

Green eyes and

 

I tripped and fell and

My bloody knees

Spoke up with

Fearguiltandshame

Held out like

Hands for salvation.

Fiction

 

I heard a breeze on

Through the curtains

 

And when I waited up

For you

 

I got stuck in sunlight

Through the window

 

In doubt in debt we

Live in this apartment

 

And there we are

Hanging on the wall

 

You were four and

I was six

 

And we were purple tongues

And watermelon seed spitters

 

And the chair by the wall

By the window is a magnet

 

It's Tuesday, you left Sunday

And I'm never leaving

 

Until you come through

The door

 

And it's make believe

You're make believe

 

I've never ever

Known you but

 

I want to

I want to

 

Make this story

Real.

Under The Bodhi Tree or Why I Talk Of Sleep So Much

When perspective walks with atom bombs and

The politicians are talking through ether soaked rags and

Everyone's on soul dialysis...

 

When your brain is the image negative of a soup strainer and

The children play on dead logs for bikes and

Plastic is God...

 

When the next revenge is no longer currency and

Dem Black Man suspicion ain't the status quo and

I can read and write again...

 

When the shopping bags don't stir in the windswept gutters and

The carrion mobs divorce their televisions,

When Time is a function of

 

Slow vibrational Love

And

Silent syllables of

 

Om Mani Padme Hum and

Our Father who art in Heaven.

 

 

Or is it:

Our Father who art

Slow vibrational silence

And the

Syllables of Love

That go

Om Mani Padme Hum?

 

So everything is changing-

 

Am I in Heaven?

 

***

 

When all is said and done,

I'll sit beneath the

Bodhi tree and

Fall fast asleep

Forever.

Drop Bombs

Who wakewalks through

Vision quests and the

Collective unconscious of

The diasporic church,

 

And

 

Who with infant hands and

Stained lips,

With war song lullabies and

Bile jealous piss,

 

Who dreams with the bath water and

Plants dead trees in

Fields.

 

Who lives in your mouth.

 

Who never learns.

 

I've been sleeping in circles again.

 

I'm living my days in a cardboard box.

 

This is the universe.

 

...

 

What am I looking for?

Smile, Look Up

A Skyfull of 

Lovenotes for 

My wildflower.

Styrofoam Anchors

Don't work.

Lucy, I Awake and All My Love To The Sun

2(2)Ly,

Lucy I

Awake:

 

 

If I got into the shower,

And you into God's ocean.

If I scrubbed away the scabs, and

If you swam into the sun,

If I slipped and caught my head upon-

You slipped and sank beneath the waves,

I tore my skin upon the ledge,

You swallowed salt and frozen sea,

I lay upon the tile-

You drifted slow

I slept

You sleep

Indefinitely

 

In definite-

Ly

 

Sleep

 

And then awake anew affirm an infant you and

I awoke a body blue a boy a truth a son of Now,

Then awake, awake, awake.

 

***

 

Sun, ashen

Egg of

Far away beginning and

Long ago beginning, Egg

And sun.

 

Sun, son and soon

They, this one be-

Coming two and

One again, the

Constant division of

Light and life and

Liquid fire meeting

Future, who meets

Woman and

Father, who marries

And makes another,

Sun and Son the

Cycle

Continues, et cetera

Et cetera

 

This I pray.

 

This I pray.

 

***

 

Egg(2) # 97

 

Egg, yes ashy

Hello star, oh

Hello ball of

Melting time, and

Gravity.

 

Hello my ashy star.

 

I love you ashy gravity.

I Find It Hard To Sleep or I'm The Reason They Invented Ativan

I can't wind down because

There's a

Long line, a

Loud gray string of words,

And I'm quaking,

Literally shaking in

Bed, trying to wrap

My mind/tongue 'round them.

I can't wind down.

***

My truth is tree branch

Splitting, meth jagging,

Lie spitting, offshoot

Greens and Yellows...

 

My truth is yes and no

And "Never-Knowing"

Insecurity.

 

And talking too much.

 

If ignorance is bliss then

This moment is riot frenzy

And cut throat panic;

 

This is self awareness.

 

This is looking into the Mirror.

 

***

 

 One more:

 

My eyes are 2AM crosses and

The screen extends

Approaching borders of sight insane.

 

Type. Tick, take the airplane thoughts,

Jet engine screaming sonnets and the

Firetruck roaring whispers

To bed and sleep.

 

And sleep.

 

My eyes are 2AM crosses.

 

And sleep.

 

***

 

I can't stop now:

 

This has become compulsive:

 

I. I(2) The sleazy politician

On my tongue and in my mind

Was stunned and word-

Less when I stood and

Said I could not stay and

Listen. Turns out I mis-

Understood her.

 

*I don't know why I'm writing about this*

 

I(2) I, I to the nTh degree,

I in many forms and in-

Finite facets, I

Am I am I am.

 

Awake

Asleep

I am a dreamer waking

One night at a time.

 

To be

More specific.

 

I am a sleeper dying

One dreaming moment in

Anti

Time or is it

The waker walking

Through life with

Dead dreams and

Blooming sanity

 

And is this all nonsense?

 

I think we know...

 

Or let me be specific.

 

I'm dying every moment I'm alive.

I'm living every moment I'm asleep, waking or

Dreaming and it's paradoxically

Simple. Don't you get it?

 

Awareness is God's(?)

Hilarious joke....

 

What must the dogs think?

 

***

 

Goodnight.