Saturday, January 31, 2009

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

Monday, January 26, 2009

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

Sunday, January 25, 2009

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.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

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

Thursday, January 22, 2009

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.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

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.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

101

What will a woman do for a man?
What will a woman do for love?

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Passing Unseen

***

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




Tuesday, January 13, 2009

In Progress

I'll be with her
as the night starts to thin
and the milk dawn pulls
like sheets from your bed

Saturday, January 10, 2009

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

Thursday, January 8, 2009

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


Wednesday, January 7, 2009

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

Sunday, January 4, 2009

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.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

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?