A Promise of Failings

I bring the slaughter to the lamb 

I delivered prayer to folded hands 

I carried paper to the tree

But I can't bring you back to me

I brought the candle to the flame

I guide the angry mob to blame

I show the ocean to the sea

But I can't bring you home to me

I brought the chapel to the bride

I shared the truth with all the lies

I taught the poor of poverty 

But I still can't bring you home

to me

Songs For Laughter

I know you are a woman grown

I've heard you on the telephone

but you're the one

who scarred my hands with laughter

I took your word, I didn't tell

the priest when I was scared of Hell

Instead I watched

the sun bleed for an hour

And now I sit with photographs

I listen and I don't talk back

they tell me of the sea

and of the sailors 

They tell me of the sea

and of the sailors

And now I sit with photographs

we took them on the mountain paths

they tell me of the sea

and of the sailors sailing endlessly

I want to know 

the ending of the story.

Oh finally the call would come

I would not fall I would not run

I'd remember how

you scarred my hands with laughter

Our children dreaming in the yard

of Pisces swimming in the stars

They're ours because

you scarred my hands with laughter

.... to be continued

This Is Our Gratitude

Oh, welcome trees

welcome garden grown

Oh, how stillness seeps in

my arms asleep, at peace

Oh, look, the roof of stars it spins

while I root with the grass

Oh, God, HOW?

To be amazed

Oh, to be intoxicated

by the smell of Now

the taste of it

the feeling of Real Time on my palms

the sounds and sights of the Only Moment

Oh, to be

The Sentence

Boxed meaning

Neat, tidy, with a bow

and beautifully gift-wrapped

for you to enjoy

The language of thought

traveling at the speed of mind

and born of the heart;

The package is

a three word galaxy

the one that reads:

I love you

Huxley's Gilded Cages

A truth and perhaps a smile 

and then a cup of tea.

Pisces One

For the Italian girl wandering,

who can't stay long,

who flees when the trees come alive.

For the painter and the poet, 

and the dark haired hippy,

whose G's sometimes come out like K's.

Who knows things,

those secret things,

things that light up the shadowy nooks and crannies

of mind.

Who explains to me so well.

For She,

in infinite star-sign enchantment,

She in stillness, impossibly in motion

which is to say, the source of some beautiful slow vibration,

that One which stands out to dance against all other vibrations of this universe;

that One possessed by few.

For the Italian girl wandering,

Pisces One.

Hunger; For Joy

What stuckness! 

What longing!

Such an urge, from my gut

and from each part of my body

to write, to spill.

And where and how?

Why?

For art or self, 

or love or ego?

What veiled satisfaction is it

that I crave?

Again, I ask,

for love?

Is it love of art,

the art of self, 

or is it some tangled self love,

some ego-sexual act;

the ejaculation of words 

and imagined facets of I am this,

know me.

I project deepness when in truth

I am a seeker.

I am a small child.

I have such a hunger,

and such a ways to go.

Dean Kamen

"The world will not be saved by the internet."

Maybe I'll come back to this. Holy shit....

Heartbreak: TED

The beauty of it all is

the most saddening 

sensations, emotions, feelings

I can't evolve

Into The Valley of Hands

I fell into the ether of doubt

but I found your sparkling eyes

smiles to warm, kisses to wake

a touch to take me further down 

into the valley of hands.

America

America, because of you I have snakes and bullets in my wallet

broken teeth and bad dreams

a handful of blood

America, because of you I have pain in my eyes

a blistering tongue

sadness in every vein

America, because of you my wife is dead

she couldn't bear the guilt

she crumbled to dust

America, you stole everything from the soil

to grow the tree

An Angry Mouth Not Understood

The miracle worker, sometimes hated or feared is not understood 

because his magic brings silence to reason

I am paralyzed with question mark tattoos

a thirst for answers and patience

But I have no patience to be patient

I am only a clenched fist now

a winding cable, their grinding teeth

The masses hiss like the clustered eye

the thousand locust cloud

Something must come

The messiah feels it in his bones

a black confusion sound

a jet clap, a bag, a bottle, a broken staff

So the white wizard, the ashen witch

the spellsingers brood

The miracle worker, hated or feared

is never understood.

101

What will a woman do for a man?

What will a woman do for love?

Passing Unseen

***

I came home to WWIII so I went to the attic and wrote

In Progress

I'll be with her

as the night starts to thin

and the milk dawn pulls

like sheets from your bed

Vacation

So who are the beautiful people

and where is the island?

I've waited long, a long time

for sand, sun and a sorting out

of ghosts

I hoped the light, the breeze through everything

would send away the voices but instead

they intensified, fed

on the fuel of sand and sun,

water everywhere,

music and dancing nakedness, women,

paid attractions and I

drink something milky

from a coconut 

and I walk past my wife, 

past the liquor huts and the dancers,

I find my quiet hotel room

and I draw longs lines across my slender wrists

in the bathtub. 

Dead Yet

I've given 

almost everything I've got,

but I'm not dead yet

so just keep listening

I've played bones with 

the dark devil,

I've rattled 

with the cages of doubt,

I've touched the black under his eyelids

and I'm not dead yet

One Bad Dream

One hundred letters, blood-water and paper umbrellas

One more tired story about a man and his gun

One hour of sober meditation followed by

One hollow lung

Patriots

Citizens of providence

those who dropped the ball 

the citizens of manifest destiny

God told me he hates them all

Promise (Unfinished)

I have keys to carry the sun

and promises to carry the sign

I have hands to carry the love

I promised to carry the line

Family

I often suspect 

that family just gets in the way

of getting better

Mothers are the worst

Fathers next

When love and conflict meet

no one gets what they need

Following

I spend some nights awake 

and wandering through your diary

like aisles in a store

I find rainbows of experience

small pieces of a big story

still frames of a girl I'd like to know

I think I could spend all night 

exploring your flea market mind

the lamps and old dressers

the dusty magazines and photographs

that you manifest

Smallness In Such A Big Place

In Montreal 

we stopped for a bite and

I said, Hey have you heard of Ben's?

to which she replied

Sorry hun, I think it's closed

So we wandered side streets instead

trying on scarves and arab jewellry

getting lost in tea shops

falling in love with our own

smallness 

in such a big place

Finding A Way, The Tao Of War

Maybe it's the time he said 
The living are the dying dead,
And then he spoke a mighty prayer
For all those who have rooted.

I was there, I was naive
I wanted badly to believe
The answers, they would take to seed
But all the soil was broken.

This war is holy only in
The revelation of our sin
The muddied answers all begin
To point to disillusion.

To point to disillusion.

7:14

I sang in the kitchen
And I slept sideways 
In a single bed.

Nobody saw us steal 
The black sky.
Nobody saw us take
Hunger from the poor.

Now I read by moonlight
And my desk lamp
Smokes cigarettes with 
Literary greats.

And my ulcers
Are back.

I'm a little more than dead and
A little less than living,
So what am I?

For now,
I'm just
Awake.

I

I climbed the mountain on my back

I spent the dollars, heartless black

I kissed an angel on the rack

I slept inside an ancient sack

I prayed with Joseph on the hill

I took a girl not on the pill

I painted on the window sill

I'm sorry it was you they killed

I dreamed of empty stables gray

I dreamed the night and day away

I spoke with nothing good to say

I think that I will be okay

I said sweet mother please don't cry

For you won't be the last to die,

We'll join you soon up in the sky

And then I watched my mother die

I stole a piece of Mary's heart

I sold my rusting lies as art

I begged for mercy from the start

I tore down Libra from the chart

I fought with mystic vision quests

I sleep all day but never rest

I bled for Him I did my best

I tried so hard to build a nest

And now I'm done

And now I'm done

And now I'm done

Revolution: A Closed Curve

When a man places the poison cup

In his own wife's hands,

The beast of war has won

And all the babies will be born

Without mothers.

Welcome 2009

My home is full of appliances, 

Humming,

And buzzing.

Bukowski would talk of cockroach sounds 

And the noise a woman makes when you hit her

In your seedy motel room.

Frost would lament the 

End of the quiet places.

Thompson might go on a tangent,

Something about Nixon and the fascists

Coming to probe us with high frequency 

Columbian Hissing Snakes.

Ginsberg would just make sad dedications and

Neruda would ode something delicate.

Old Cohen would write something incredible.

New Cohen would write something incredible too,

And then tell you to "Zen the fuck out."

But me?

I say fuck Zen and fuck odes to fascist snakes!

Fuck dedications and fuck beating on women.

Fuck the quiet places.

I'm going to bathe in this noise,

And I'm going to soak the slow vibrating whine

Into my skin, and shiver 

Every last drop of seed on rigid tiptoes.

This is Me,

Embracing Future-Now, orgasm-2009.

Summer Ends

All you know are violins, gold poems of dust,

And starving on the seeds of saddened fruit.

And the stale sky kisses your eyes goodnight,

As you sleep in your grandfather's Sunday suit.

With vinyl spinning coldly and her hand laid on your chest,

You sing the Cold War requiem and seduce her.

And winter's held at bay by fingers tirelessly strumming,

Her eyes no longer longing as they once were.

And I have taken sick again,

The long night like a dear old friend,

The strumming ends and welcomes in the winter.

33 or Why I Wish I Wrote 'Suzanne'

Mr. Cohen,

How you guide me, 

Through night time struggle

And being lost in the sheets,

And how you speed me on,

To attempt after attempt,

Until I've cracked my head

On all four walls.

And I'm still trying 

And some nights it works.

Mr. Cohen, 

Some nights I'm pleased with the words.

And some nights, 

The words are pleased to be free,

But most nights

I just sit up and pretend to hear your words

And the cotton smoke crackling

Of vinyl rotating at Thirty Three R.P.M.

***

Will You?

I've seen the light in your eyes,

Deep sapphire starlight.

Will you help or hurt me?

And I've heard the laughter on your tongue,

And I've felt the hearthstone heat in your chest.

I've tasted your salt tears,

I know your secret scent.

Will you help or hurt me?