Monday, May 28, 2012

egress from a brightly lit land (part 1)

we take small steps out from what
many like to say is a dark
nightland
a dim graphite-hued landscape
where everything is dead and faded

the truth is
it's very bright
too bright
bright enough to delineate the most
strangling detail in hyperfocus
both lies and truths
illuminated with equal shading
spoken crisply and eloquently and
the faces of the past aren't as
some sloppy distressed watercolor
but really a professionally animated decoupage
individualized and bordered and
sharply recalled
ready to bleed the vomit of your own
magnificent fuckups directly into your
mouth
twisting your own language
torturing you
slicing off your cock
digging beautiful dragon's teeth of glass
into your starving arms wet and pliant and welcoming as
egg custard
laughing delicately then
heartily til you find
yourself horrifically laughing back

we drag our way through the technicolor
trying to understand it at first

well
trying to understand it for a
really
long                               long
while
we ponder it
we arm ourselves intellectually against it
then with it
helping it for a while
then we combat it again in
a kind of schizophrenic musical trench warfare
catching ourselves by our own thrown projectiles
it could be months lived like this
elongated and tallied by the measures of
sleepless eternal evenings
clutching our cold brains
fraught with dreams of justice and reconciliation
dramatic gestures devised
celebrations of delicate grandeur
deadeyed
zombified by what we lack

to pursue a jagged path through we
generate the loveliest distractions:
other people
the centers of our bodies
intoxications and pharmaceutical delights
flickering entertainments
twitch dopamine carousels
riding the hypothalamus bareback and hitting
every obvious obstacle right at the fucking knees
progress is pitilessly slow and mired
sometimes we turn around and are being chased
sometimes we are chasing the stoic end of the day
sometimes we are chasing the fragile morning
sometimes we find we are simply running for some time

you would think that when we hit the gate we
crash heroically through it with
all this stored kinetic energy and
the fury of the chase but
this land never moves and though everything in
this land is moving nothing is moving and
we get there right at the edge of it and
this is probably where we stay the longest
and this
is probably
where many others
still
live
and we think
about that
and we are
no longer
moving

hielo / one hundred and four degrees

maybe it's nothing
cigarette smoke cascading cancer over
old blankets
suffusing particulate suffering as
murmured words
absorbing errors and freewheeling
mental imagery and crushed romantic
dirges into this weathered fabric
rescuing images from the past like a
cloudy sky

she's kind of weird
like that
maybe
it's nothing that she wakes up
early to chuckle over something she's
reading
or make perfect coffee and
hypothesize the day before
bothering me but

it always
seems
to
be 155 in the morning now it
angles into the room like
shafts of ambivalent sunlight
awoken with the ghosts of her and
the hateful architecture of the day
positioned before me
i gather my diseased moorings close and
angle towards it

and
maybe
enlightened by nothing
to nothing
i procrastinate in the softer unseen
edges of her
and designate abandoned boundaries where her
gentle breath breathed tunnels into
mine and
submerge into the discordant ink where her
prose met
mine and find my
enemies in what remains maybe

it's nothing but
the mythic refrains circumnavigating these
streets and rooms which are forever
our moments
a frozen garden
where
nothing grows
or
dies

Saturday, May 19, 2012

you may have just won ten million dollars

he will never
hurt himself
he will absorb and
conjure and perjure and
suture and culture but
not injure or
enfeeble or dart
across the surface of
an eye or meet
soft redemption in
hands that run through
hair or asleep in
chemical tendrils be
destroyed
he will
stay
forever
trapped in some kind
of a creased permanent
stance like a specious
bookmark
made of magazine clippings
and fucking stupid taunting
habits and immature
somnambulist ideas and
sincere loathsome
molecular destruction in
a
dream
yesterday
my
left arm and hand sliced
and shredded and scarred
over a mix of
old wounds and new and
the pinky torn off
below the knuckle and the
scars like braille or dna
held down by the throat
unable to speak
or wake until
woken
i was
able to be
silent and dreaming

i remember waking up to calm
adjacent nightmares
i remember a soft breeze at night
blown over and around our
furniture and mixed in
with our breath
the sounds of partying neighbors
and backyard dogs baying and
our selves redacted to
an atomic whole
i remember rhythmic iloveyous
and passion and complacency and disinterest and
verve and thrill and pleasant boredom and
ravenous bloodthirsty boredom and elegant
sated boredom and the boredom of
knowing how not to be bored and avoidance and
the lack of faith and the loss of it and
my old dying frame a hideous
portrait and my face something to be
idly destroyed like junk mail

this is what it looks like
when i'm just walking around:

a king bullshitter
self lacerated
drunk & drugged
staring at pedestrians who
cope like master craftsmen
going through the motions of
emotions breaking up the
composite motions of
smiling hello or buying a granola bar or
taking a shit or two-stepping the subway
stairs or feeling for the right grapefruit

near the end of a given day i
expend the limit of my energies paying
for groceries with a debit
card exactly like a normal
person

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

uzumaki / kiss in the parking lot

the murmur of
crooked wildlife
a mirror of ice of
arms of
glass of drifted
animal darkness chasing
through cruel grateful
dreaming sleepless counterfeit
bloodless architecture soaked and
hollow
when removed

a hand disturbs when awake
like a stranger breaking
my concentration
then
refocusing carefully
temporarily
for the most miniature
moment to try to
find in them the most
rudimentary trust

cold blood in
a voice in a very
small machine on
a street in the
sun recorded by
a security camera

Friday, May 11, 2012

bookmark

not
really
sure

maybe it's the supernova
of incongruous loneliness
spread upon a sunlit day of footsteps

or it's xanadu
in ten breaths that separate
the thought of her
from ten different
inhalations
that occupy a mesmerized
valley of disjointed
anarchic
resilient
jealous
dreamily indistinct and
tortured daggereyed
rooms

where every object
is a talisman
wrought with grave and
disgusting memory

where
possessed with simmering
self
hatred
that disturbs any
shaky attempt to nourish
or push forward or
comply

not really sure

maybe it's the
bubbling liquid
surface of
the real
maybe
muscle memory
replete with soft
goosebumped arms
hands roughened by
life and motherhood
always causing a weird
distraught gesture i've
tried to hide
like a pill
under the tongue

not
really
sure about
what lies under the tongue
an honesty that presupposes
fear
a
dark urge
punishing whoever
would place stupid faith or
gamble their crumbling joy to
this deft ghost

he haunts our old roads our
words and narratives
he kisses the empty space
he mumbles
not really sure
he picks up our books
he doesn't know
what they
are for

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

camera #4 / Bedford Park to Fordham Road

junkie in bad sneakers on a long stumblish walk
past the ubiquitous subway sandwich shop sandwich board
bored and fretting
the bus is close but legs feel free
taking me past quinceanera bakeries
and fake toys at family dollar
little farther
i'm wading through auto chop shops and
pitbull collars
shoptalking around the homeless
lined up at P.O.T.S.
holler for spare cigarettes and scratching lotto cards
lot of closed up storefronts
battered faces eye me warily
carwash kitty dashes past the morning daring me
to chase him through the metro north fencework
too late for the second bus intense
doesn't even stop for a splitsecond
the school is filled with recess yard dramas
i fastwalk past the stop sign persistently ignored
or be gored by an impala
or the SUV with the smiling family
new bodega opened up 6 months ago
never needed in this neighborhood
yet they never leave this neighborhood
cross the street
fordham trumpeting its million shopper march
neverending trinket tables
shell games and WE BUY
GOLD AND DIAMONDS fables and
the storm sounds
of the train
avoid the rain under the best buy shelter on the corner
i disappear behind a door
wearing karma's
garments as
armor

Thursday, May 3, 2012

guru / trev

he was a shitty yet
willing parent
to a kid with
shitty parents

he liked to fight and
defend
smoked careless blunts
with a seasoned
efficacy
climbed trees on acid
always had this
girl or that one
standing very elegantly a few
feet away
green or purple natty
dreadlocks
and a smile
that brought those
around him out of
bad trip nightmares

perched on a central
park midnight rock
spitting weird elastic truths
or sitting in the
6th ave taco bell by
the window before
the fire
deconstructing a chili cheese burrito
cackling like
an illuminated isaac
newton

he played hackeysack
he scared off the
plainclothes de-tecs
smoking a cigarette
eating an avocado or
spooning out a mason jar
of skinned coconut and honey
or laughing larger
than my entire lifetime

anathema to assholes
peacebringer
ducking out when
the scene was shady
we exploded lighters and
conducted other
petty mischief
around fort greene park
or gobbled a quick slice
of brooklyn pizza
high on chocolate thai and
blathering about
saturday morning
cartoons

he giggled like a child but
later straight fucked up a
drunken asshole near NYU
who was
talking that bullshit
completely ignorant
of the fact that he was
speaking to the negro brooklyn
buddha in
black jeans
a dedicated smile that could squash a
lifetime beef or
send shivers down
the spine of those
who would
do harm

sitting at chelsea pier (he
pretended I was fucking
him and his girlfriend to
ditch unwanted
suitors) we smoke
cigarettes and
try together
extremely
hard to make sense
of it all

i called his house
once
his father's inebriated
voice barely
knew he had
a child

let alone a man
who had
saved
my life

pray

i'm self-improved
honed to a superfine edge
a careless knife
wild hair
fucked up jeans

mumbling through the errant city
mind emptied
taking the next unknown corners
mesmerized by mirrors that play
videos of the insecure child
with a badluck god

he was insincere
sometimes he ditched synagogue to
play streetfighter at the
candystore
sometimes he wrote
secrets in the corners of the
looseleaf behind the
pink line and then
tore them out
burned them
eradicated
ate them

sometimes he intoned
murder prayers
concentrated ill will on
his enemies like
orbital lasers
sometimes he stole large
things which were small or small
larger things
sometimes he died
back when he was
supposed to

sometimes he
was still here

what time is

he is sincere
he waits for culminating
reason in the folds of icy blankets
brain cell massacre
the hum of machinery
the sounds of lonely technology
warmed by ideas and options
he has always known

the years that poured forth
had always been possessed of a
certain magic
a phantom haunting his own
objects
a decade of painful material accumulated
ornamental and tenuous like
a faded translucent garment
favored
as veritable avatar
playing the part
of himself

it doesn't stop
being night
the chemicals
are always emptying and
become mysteriously
replenished
the circuits of daily
life continually
routed and fulfilled
the familiar strangers are
always waiting to be
reactivated

a distant sound
doesn't alarm him anymore
for a few seconds
he forgets himself

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

the world is round

it's past the time
he woke up
emptied of resources
a vast collection
of blank refrains
perfect mantras that
celebrate these
hollow derivative
gestures

teenage lies and self-mythologized
conspiracies
angry solutions to
homebrewed situations
the art of convincing
the half-interested to fuck
this damaged scaffolding

decisions whose pedigree a poisoned
brain jettisoning accountability
putting on adult garments that
filter sensations like touch or
shamelessly absorb the crass
sunlight

calendars emptied of meaning
beleaguered journeys down mystic
nocturnal freezing dawn avenues
prescribing value and achievement to
events
alchemy constructing cracked armor

he collected antiques
odd old phrases
former glamors
underlined text in stolen books
literary snake oil
remembered adrenaline
disintegrated tshirts
betrayals
passionate angers
smoking the soft moss that inevitably grows on a romance from 14
years ago

he thought memories were a building material
he thought he was old enough to enjoy his simple needs
young enough to make each warm day new
he thought that avocados on sale for 99 cents and
they have those greek yogurts he likes
he thought trains running local between yankee
stadium and fordham he
thought be home after midnight don't
lock me out thought25pushups
inthemorningthought wonderful pronunciation
of hebrew for a spanish kid thought
the world isn't round
it's flat
like a map in a nintendo
game

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

seize

i try to
stop falling apart and
there's the blackest
sun ive ever seen this

green reflection like the
inverted camera of a
pond shifting askew what
was a smile to
self the

sound of footsteps and
pride there
is an echo and
addiction and
blood inside a
smile to
selfishness and

everything is quiet and
calm and muttered in
a pleasant harmonious
language

i walk around

im the most normal boy in
the world