whoa man - that's deep

.
when you turn on a light,

you don't see the light

-

you see the light-bulb.




(this realization has blown my mind)

I need a piece of toast

I have a need, this growing thirst
it must be quenched or I will burst
--but my thirst is not the liquid kind, however
it is luscious toast for which I pine...

a slice of rye, or loaf of brown
glass of milk to wash it down
some toast I need to sop my wounds
blackened grain for every mood
a crispy breastplate for my soul
stacked upon a plate with rolls

yes, I crave toast in all its myriad form
singed so glorious every morn
toast to slather, toast to butter
a crusted sister, a raisined brother
--why, if I had toast instead of family
then christmas would pass quite crunchily

I call for jams, I cry for jelly!
clear some room within my belly!
coax the honey, rouse nutella!
Mr. Toasty is a hungry fella!

I walk through life - not living - inside a dream
of toasted angels with crumbèd wings
while my toaster sleeps 'neath stars that gleam
I prithee wake me when it dings

Boxing Day Special!

Who poisoned our primate primacy? Invalidated vertical-vertebrate victory? ‘Twas the Venus villains in their moments of truculence, so bustling and mammarious, deep and cavernous like a moistened fig. ‘Twas the taut limbic bubble teeth, the oily meerschaum moneyed cockroachery. Yet none of it compares to a fine grain of flaxen mucus... Look, a wagon of indecision! A brown paperbag of damnation! O you snails of weariness, do avoid the Zippo cliques, you helmeted online dowsers oaring your way to Niger-nirvana: have you lately kissed a midget? Have you ever jellied a hedgehog? You lack so much experience – it could make a concierge blush or wet his pants. Yesterday, my friends, I drowned a lemur – my patience is not Stonehenge; and tomorrow I may fancy an onion bath – my tears will flow like rainwater. So zounds to you, o accomplices of stench! Woe to the wicked that crackle and dance! My brain’s not made of tungsten, I have no good ideas; my insides are polycarbonate; you fools who rub my left index finger, you are like the singular sing-signalizers or malevolent malingerers, and I huff and puff and puke. Has Mabel made you pimple-necked; has Morty stolen every last nickel, or five hours worth of thunder? Hmm, exactly as I thought…. Now lay the peppered parmiggiano lasagna inside my yellow brick oven; greet the plumber on his way down the caboose, hurl cabbages if you like – such vegetables are healthy – or trek the vast white Klondike. Fondle every last bit of plasticine, its furrows are ingenious, it makes gobs and gobs of cents, like friendly Konrad and the lashless Lorenz… Attention all pot-bangers! Your clanging soothes my nerves; call your friends in from the frying-pan orchestra and bash me repeatedly. For I know a purple dinosaur, we call him Garth the Vagabond, he is a pterodactyl, he rhymes in terrifying dactyls – so large, loud and reptilian is crotchety Garth, alone in the dark, perpetually missing the mark with his extinctual existence…

(Merry Christmas!)

love and loveliness

Don’t sleep – it’s so much lost time. We don’t want to scare ourselves but we do. I went back to church again. I was helping out again, and I was talking straight with you. I was helping out at the door, I greeted every patron. At Christmas we're back together; now I’m out of school, I need Christmas more than ever. We went back, where we began, we continued, even better. You never could tell a lie, but you hide your eyes when you cry. I always felt so bogus, I thought we could get through this. But your face still makes me sing.

The crystal tinkled down the hall, and I was in tune with that piece of glass; I was vibrating again, one crystal among thousands, spreading fire from top to mountaintop. I was circling around again, I was a whirlpool, plucking you in my octopus arms. I lifted you up every night; there was nothing stronger than that embrace, nothing as cruel as your smiling face. I memorized the tragedy, then I performed it, so let's all laugh at it. Four or five minutes I made you feel; I am here in the ears, I am in your throat, forcing myself out - why don’t you sing your own song? I am driving you over to meet a friend, he was wandering so long; we all got found together when we found each other finally. So touch my feet with your warm hands, touch my toes.

Calabria

(I was supposed to write this a year and a half ago. what can I say, except it takes me a while to digest)

Calabria
in my grandfather’s town
olive trees tall as ents
greeted by a marching band
the local ladies and gents
all so good looking
except for hairy arms
wrists and necks, dark and thick
from errands to the farm

then came bovalino, and
I saw such simplicity
my cousins had an orange grove
fruit was falling off the trees—
I felt myself in that cracked pavement
I’m not just going on
memory

“the ionian sea is a green crystal
lonely in may, yes, but swimmable…”
we lay down on pebbles
you were so beautiful
you were there
all this time, apart
all that we have, shared

my land is a foreign land
filled with people like me
my eyes and smile
even the dimple.
you wonder where you come from
wonder if you’ll always be there
there was a boy who came from the hills
there is a boy who loves the sea
now I finally understand
I come from
Italy.

unforgivable/unforgettable

cross country drove
with a man
at a drop, she left him
to become my woman
turned round, home drove alone
a fickle thing
what a thing
for me trading him

eight months later, so
I did what I must
the bullet bit
she bit the dust
eight months crushed
- a fickle thing, I was -
had it coming, all summer she
had left me hanging
- she, then, left him

it was lose lose
making beds
baking cake and eating too
lying in steads
eight months later
what I did was just
but back again looking
was all of it just
a
serially monogamous resentment bust?

I met an angel yesterday...

I met an angel yesterday, she was naked from the wings down. She hopped on me, it was love at first bite, like crunch and munch except I was no candy corn. Or maybe she was a vampire? This is the wildest thing I can think of, this tall bleat-barn in the woods, the limousine fleets the keen dream to believe the sheened mean yuletide touching xmas spirit the loving loch ness wildebeest, the memory of fingers on keyboard, and the oar lackeys the child bunkers the welted fright in the massed moonlighty doomed hemmorhoidal butler kegs. Jealous French fries fasten lifelines to mosaics so sweet, in the war room the umpteenth fragment of mirth reminds us of the everpresent value of the downy feather furniture revival. Here is the talking mushroom boat, the eleventh hour of your doom. Logan and the Hereford cows, the meatmongering diatribes sullen until happy go luckily skipperish tickles swing and sashay like police firefights in the emergency service wards of eastern Kentucky, the loveliest Jellofied wrath rapids the gangrenous screams of sawed off limburgers, the Joycean gaffes the crystal-meth methods and icicles made of iodine, the kernel at the centre of an atom, no more a hypothesis than a way of speaking – it’s not so much a particle as a process, dialogue; this 21st-century physics best pictured by illiterates. Waves and light and the particulate fight, the moonstone moan, the laconifying library loan, the reindeer vixen named Dasher the Christmas cookie I chewed the ginger loaf I bent and polemics insistently propagated, the half assed attempt at trickery the bickering road crows that take wing and issue with every chiasmatic foodstuff, taking different intestinal paths down to the same stomach acid. Pretty parlance is not enough; we like love and it’s better if it’s rough. Try me on for size, talk about the Western decline the fractalized nuances that take up your time, so you get to be an expert, chasing down nothing to infinity like the graph of 1/x. I called myself St. Cecil, the trout of love and valour, the infantile choler, the high-pitched squeal that rachets your blood pressure. Kaleidoscope enemies, the whirlpool words, the scrabble fads and crossword kibbutz, the music malarkey and the bare knuckled phrase fights – all these too shall pass.

one minute song

Here is the minute song; I got to do laundry – the bell ringing, rinse those sweaters now, pump quarters into high and dry time machines. (Fabric softener's the best thing to soften fabric, that's tautologic.) If obsessing every minute, take 60 seconds to relax. To reach a conclusion, begin at the ending, slice problems into pieces; work backwards, end up at beginning; show your professor on lined paper, and it's right on to next one... time is tickling - don't laugh wasting it; go ahead, laugh as it wastes you.

creepy-crawly thoughts while waiting for the streetcar

All cars should have six wheels, and be named after insects - eg the Volkswagen Bug, the most successful car ever - b/c that's what they look like; that's how they act. Subways/metros are worms, commuter trains are snakes; buses and streetcars are slugs and caterpillars respectively. Airplanes are dragonflies, while most boats fit into the spectrum of whirligig to electric eel, depending on size. A tank is a kind of armadillo; submarines are sea turtles. The space shuttle is a bird - the only thing we've built that can truly fly. Helicopters? Hmm, a cross between spiders and grasshoppers - that's a tough one to classify... Paved concrete is just frozen dirt.

Zanzibar and Elenore encounter a rascal

"Rum tum tugger - I am a bootlegging bugger"

Trucking rum down to Alabama, Zanzibar and Elenore met trouble off the I-95 interstate, by an El Cheapo gas station outside Savanna Georgia. A mucklucking rascal approached the van with a hostile gait, waving a pistol. “Hoss me the vittles,” cried the well-armed rake - “the gig is jiggy!” The rumrunners would've run but were transfixed by fear; Zanzibar could have stomped the horn to get attention, but few cars were around at 2 am. The gangster’s Beretta sang twice into the sky - this rascal was deadly. The back door opened by force; rum was all over the floor. The rascal licked his lips, grinned in a sweat, "Jeebus been good to me!" And Elenore hissed, "Take it quick, you rascal - and you tell El Santos that he's won this round," and she puked all over her shoes. El Santos had his way again, and Big Daddy would not be pleased...

Your stepsister; your uncle

(pointless and violent... just like _________?)


Your stepsister

Your stepsister is a hog
she wants to hold a rave
dance upon the table
and toss her saffron recipe
she likes to cook
man does she like to cook
shake it up and shake and bake
things are interesting in
the kitchen ’round here
we are having a wild burlesque orgy
things are pretty fun


Your uncle

Your uncle is a demon
he spits and calls for Jehovah
he likes to roll the dice
he destroyed a rack of spices on a wall
and didn’t repay the owner
the owner got upset
and purchased a large sharp weapon
which can be found in
your uncle’s skull, now
messily cleaved in two

Dec 9 - four sweet paragraphs

Face the dragon and click until the ticket says go home; it’s mid-evening in winter. Music loud enough to inspire, but not overpower; Thursday, stomach rumbling, predictability, words go down easy, and here are the images: jello shots sucked off women twice our age, fiendish dominatrix leather bought incognito for devilish pleasure, the myriad squalor of the downtown – if you aren’t a freak here then you simply don’t belong. The safety-first bitches and grandma admin queens can’t save us now; we're tied to this life boat drifting out to sea-space, to SETI land, talking with aliens finally, negotiating a favourable treaty before the mother ship lands. It’s not easy, moving every minute; I want a nice park bench to rest my totties – but who can frickin' concentrate surrounded by these hotties… (see, I went to an all boys school, there was discipline and goodness – the importance of the rules.)

You are stylish and smooth, indiligently froo; conspicuous in effortlessness, impressing with your prescience. The vagrants fragrant push flowers on me in the middle of my dinner – my stunningly by-the-way dependable-on-Friday lady says “no no, don’t let it come to those - I’m much too humble for your red rose.” This sidewalk is where I get ideas, foot falls like bicycles in regular rolls; we interview us earnestly breaking into strolls: where did you come from? why did you leave - what are you selling and where do I get mine? We all wanna get some – and hence these obtuse interviews. I shove my obstreperous mic in your flush face; your lips go loose, lighting up the place. See that mannequin, pale by the door – you can be just like her if you lose a few more…

Tune town marigolds, daisies by the fistful, I sigh so clear and you accuse me of the wist – it goes with territory, the job of a critic; but better than obsessing about spelling and enclitics. I once studied Greek – yes, mostly on a dare – it was Greek to me; it was, all of it, there. No longer could I pretend toward ignorant bliss, so I translated words, they made sense at the time, it was a one-way relationship and really, that’s fine. But manic mannerisms are the latest word in cool; it doesn’t make sense, yet the blog dogs all drool – at the end of the day, which of us is fooled?

I talked all night to call-centre flunkies – lonely on the phone and begging for a smile; after hundreds of hang-ups there’s still that extra mile, a sucker calls it hope, to a cynic it’s the payoff; for logicians like me it’s law of evening averages. Every so often we hit pot of gold rainbow-edged bonanzas and then it’s lucky lotto leap-laughter into each other's arms, far from harm for the moment and happy in embrace, there's that one special place; to say hello or goodbye in a pure moment of class; brush the velvet elbow of that very special lass; open up your eyes before the rainbow meets the sun, evaporating dew like the things we did for fun. I’m here if you need me, but I’m all over, too – and I’m hearing that you need me; that’s exactly what I do.

Do not read this

(you have been warned)

There are things that can never be changed from one day to the next; there are the only things I can give to the licking helmet sin the fridge who tuckers the urn freaks and the garish mushroom maggots hissing sweetly since the Yule log was extinguished. Loki Paterson fielded comments from the great mass of men in the marsh water. The yellow freshwater was dripping into the plain of duress; it was Saturday and we were all alone in the cellar. Pool hall kelp drunkards and the werewolf valium salesmen who insinuate and lavish praise like so many freebie flyers handed on the corner; this was the last straw I promise you. Laser surgery burns me down to the very pores; this is the righteousness of vanity the smooth skin nazism the well coiffed fascist flipping birds into the visual field of all the underlings and the eureka groupies who fawn fantastically over maddening scientists; we queen ourselves, and the gay district doesn’t even singe us, though it is flaming. Police the manicure barns; they are swimming with corruption; dry out the long lost apprentice manuals – there are secrets in there that have to be understood—let us think about what we are saying, let us discuss with each other the consequences of this keyboard. I have a feeling this jazz will not go down well, we all have delicate stomachs you know, and nothing goes stale quicker than yesterday’s newspaper or last night’s jazz. Modigliani in town to impress upon tourists the need to pay homage to pay respect to pay a few dollars at the door – this town knows art from farts; this town can really boogie if it has to and we can consider this the most impressive achievement to date—wagon wheels aligning themselves into dew point symphonies, and occasionally here is the fixed up bread the loaf for slicing the moronic massacre at Monday night football headquarters it’s what the networks think will attract the most ratings so why not let loose with the other programming and beam satellite images into the brain of every tom dick and Harry and hairy fairies are the long lost winter despisers the fall fellators the real estate beraters the magical mission men; the tent peg bathers – it’s off to bloatsville, the town with the fattest people in the world, the town with the tallest ogres who spit and frump around in their underwear because they have been spoiled by their mothers who always did their laundry for them but not any more because women’s lib would not have it that way. The meatloaf mothers are a thing of a past—a nostalgia fast filling up our prime time sitcom contents. Uruguay depth can never be solved, the stupefied pirates squeezing blackheads out of spite. The igloo barn that wheeze so swiftly in the lagoon bog monsters and the sweet sultry tasty ladies who touch my neck and sing me lullabies, this is a change of the mood, and the coming together in harmony at least twill seem to be a thing of such pomp and ease and the ceremonies of contentment are just beginning, there is a swallow whose wingsbeat at the thousand flaps per minute, it is the fastest creature on the planet its magic metabolism hums and swizzles the opulence is obscene, the ray of sunshine the rainbow I saw in the puddle sure it was gasoline but reflections of colour? I’ll take those whenever I can, this is a month of hard won miracles, of triumphant returns to the blank page, every line OI hammer down is a giant hug I give my friends. Zero was invented by the Greeks or the Indians—who care because that entire debate will only amount to nothing. Ha ha. The mathematics left inside die hard and the geometry is something I won’t ever take for granted. It is difficult living in a cage, it is horrible being a part of this zoo—look at me, don’t feed me e, I might bite you. Yaks are dangerous they have hair in every crevice; zebras are not much better—their stripes can make a sane man go mad—the overlaps and the subtleties, a complex figure in black and white—space enclosing space, minds cut off from the hive---that’s what’s going on when you fool yourself into thinking you are sharing this experience with any one else, that there is some sort of relationship between myself and you. The illusion the illusion is better than confusion at least so remain there is the eye, and the you, the I in the middle of the universe, the I and you, the eye and the ewe, the why and double-you, the Y is the I; surrounding the I is the world; for each man is that the centre of his world, his point of-ewe. Pointed at you, we are too. Are surrounding the world is the word—because first there was the Word, and the word gave way to flesh, and the flesh took on three dimensions, and it is only thanks to the word that we are able to see in three in dimensions; the perspective was invented in the 16th century or thereabouts just after the printing press gave us that general proliferation of things, concepts, words in a line on a page and the idea of plans and logic and the well orchestrated armies that rise up, spread until the entire earth is crushed. So it must be, and so the results are ok; we will look and not react we will passively accept because we have learned to read read so tedious when every last wheeze and sneeze from the brain when transferred to page gains that much more intensity, and if you heard me tapping away like this without a keyboard you would just think my fingers were restless and they are so that’s why it’s good to get exercise for ten minutes or so, and spread a little bit of knowledge and little bit of confusion with this systematic tapping – man it’s pretty fucking hilarious when you think about it, that this bit and byte here and there can make you shake your head in disgust and throw this laptop or whatever against the wall.

I'm all out of Confessions

"It was bound to happen, given the breakneck pace of the past year. From here in everything that happens is your fault too - it's all a favour I'm doing for you. So go ahead, let me shrivel into a raisin, let me catch TB from typing in this basement; you audiences aren't as innocent as you think. It drives someone silly trying to get some attention; you think you can click em off your conscience? You can't shake responsibility so easy. Sure this may be the internet, and everyone's anonymous - but there's still a little thing called karma; we're rolling around in this together. Whoever said money is love was wrong. No No No. Money is attention. Money is neurons firing in your brain. Click click click. Karma karma karma. The observer alters the outcome - that's the quantum physics they need to teach in kindergarten. But when I was in school they were still in the 19th century - readin', ritin', memory tricks... As for this century: if the internet ever becomes truly communist, then most idiots out there are going to be glad about Apathy Insurance, and its converse - the Popularity Tax - as measured out in jolts of electric current. It'll be the only social stabilizer we're going to need..."


(?)

My lady

My lady

She is blonde
In a bottled up way
She is brilliant
In a lovely fashion,
eh



(some phrases that might make sense one day:)

Simpler things fading away today, and it was done to maximize income; to do the thing I hate most because I get paid the most. To have a personality that doesn’t wither with the oncoming of the season. I was some teenage fool and you were a gynaecologist in the moonlight. I plumb those memories with my puffin wings in a winter’s day. One thing done well compensates for ten million disastrously.

The underwear hegemony, the rodeo monsooning. The yawn-inducing sneeze of the regicidal dwarf. A dwarf wants to harass a king at the same time he wants to claim a crescent moon sandwich from the counter of the suburban deli and the whitewashed storefront needs cleaning once spring arrives and it is one entire year of nothingness.

Every statement implies its antithesis; every statement is a challenge of truthhood and falsity. Logical statements are either true or false - which is why I prefer speaking in noun phrases. Wonder woman, the dialectical atrocity, my law of excluded middle.

So inquisitive and thoughtful and forgetful and slow to act and quick to understand. And so in love with wisdom.

(don't hold your breath)

Crystal, B

(mystic fooforaw?)

Yellow-bellied tortoise mouths make me mellow, and the ugliness I nightmared about vanished into a silver dew mist. I was crystal again; ten thousand straight lines glittered from the centre of my heart; I talked soft and you heard me ten thousand miles away. My voice made you act, your actions inspired talk, and people listened. The crystal grew from the earth, the force of tectonic shelves creating the transparent simplicity that equals beauty. William of Ockam was searching for diamonds - the clearest kind of simplicity. But we are other kinds of carbon, the messy kind; we want to be diamonds and shiny. And nothing cuts flesh like a diamond; there is nothing so cold and sharp. Now carved words don’t excite us like they used to; it’s got to be colour and light and the touch of the tongue. My poor words have taken to the wind – there is a storm, and we are in it; those words must learn to fly. Oh oh oh where do they land? Implosion and we are in it. Threats and we exalt in it. West becomes east; east, west.

There was StoneHenge, and Crystal, and the bones of men. To Bonehenge, I miss you. One day - I promise - I’ll drop by.

Marilyn and John talk rubbish-rot

John: I got a new woman now
Marilyn: Who?
J: A real fox, from the Argentine motherland
M: You mean fatherland?
J: What are you, the Fuhrer?
M: What's that mean?
J: It means you got the wrong parent silly
M: Listen Jelli-stone, you don’t know nothin bout families
J: Families often make each other cry
M: Quoting Lou Reed again?
J: Step off, bee-otch
M: Why are you talking like some gangsta?
J: I express myself in manifold modes; it’s the way to complete satisfaction. Like the great Diego Maradona said once to an Argentinian goalkeeper, "Your mom is a like a killer whale—a ten-ton murderous bitch."
M: That makes no sense
J: Neither does your mom’s harpoon-free existence
M: You have the manners of an oaf—you need to learn a thing or two about etiquette
J: I need etiquette lessons from you like a baboon needs fishing lessons from a mule
M: You need them slightly more than that. You're just silly; what's up with that?
J: Listen, maybe if you paid more attention to me when we were going out, it wouldn’t have been such a disaster. Like when I asked you to smuggle drugs from Panama into Singapore...
M: But that carries the threat of the death penalty--
J: You gotta pay the price for love
M: Speaking of, tell me bout this Argentine skank of yours?
J: She's lithe and furious
M: Like a killer whale?
J: Hey, I thought we were getting off mommas
M: We are
J: Good, cuz I just got off yours
M: Oh man
J: Yowzah
M: Well your mom's so old, she owes Jesus twenty bucks
J: Double yowzah!