Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Poem for Wednesday, September 30, 2009


No Messiah

I
think
you
have
mistaken
me
for
some
kind
of
Jesus
or
savior
in
general
I
wear
Jesus
creepers
yes
but
I
ain't
no
miracle
worker
or
messiah
I
feel
both
honored
and
ashamed
Amen.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Poem for Friday, September 15, 2009


That is Heart

A man's nerves pulsate the most
    in between the rings of a phone call

I am that man, and I am
pulsating

              unprecedented palpitations

I don't even think it's my heart or
my being, my, my
       I
       have become one with all of nature
       when I think about you
       we think about you

I am calling you, pulsating
(bum-bum-bum-bumpppp)

The birds join in the cadence, flapping
     multicolored wings against sound waves
     forming kaleidoscopes
The trees, monocots and dicots, open
     up their leaves to you in the dead winter
     (if they have no leaves, they grow green ones)
The wind, blown from the lungs of ancient
      deities, scatters your name among the nations
      in a breathy, glottalized fashion
The animals tear
                            each others' flesh

myself included--I am an animal, tearing flesh, waiting
in between the rings of a phone call, and if
if if
    you answer, I'll explode, a bloody supernova,

and you'll mistake me for a red comet
and you'll say that I am a spectacle
                                             if nothing else

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Poem for Tuesday, September 22, 2009


Yemeni Death Beach

    walking parallel to the brine
    the sand is infecting a cut in my foot
    part sediment, part pulverized bone and flesh

 eroding, withering
                                slowly
    I think
    Jesus, I've never seen a dead body before and
keep walking, the Indian
Ocean is majestic and the air is dense with
dead fish and summer warmth

   jogging now, half expecting to meet
an open-armed goddess in translucent white when
   more       bones

   this one was a little boy; I gently take the beaded
   necklace from his skull, put it on, and keep
going
         (I must keep going)

the blood on my foot
is either mine or theirs, I'm scared
    but the waves, the waves calm me down
    speak to me in rippling meters, tell
me to forget what I am seeing
                                                they say

it's a dreammmmmm
       my beach is gorgeous and innocent
              people are only good to one anotherrrrr

but what they mean is clandestine
buried, buried in the brine
     among the bones, the blood, the foreign
     languages that will never be intelligible, bottled

up with a model ship and last breaths
      floating
                  towards
                               the east, where I'm told the sun rises


Sunday, September 20, 2009

Poem for Sunday, September 20, 2009


An Apology

Thinking back to that Sunday when
my friend and I laughed during
church--

we almost spit the communion
   "wine" on the back of the feathered
    hat of the woman in front of us, the
blood of Christ trickling down the pew

draining down a universal whirlpool
beneath quaint green carpet and
raining red on the pre-Macedonian
Buddhists

Goutama, you're playing poker with
western gamblers! What is the
     truth
     behind their dark, tinted sunglasses

     what
     cards are they hiding? Probability
dictates either red or black among
thirteen numerical options, but what
about truth?
 
     Truth is, we're beside wooden chests
of drawers with manmade scratches
and dents that light maliciously exposes

     (If you tried to sell them, their
declining value would be revealed and
commercialized).

     I'z(ed) beginning to think you don't
trust me
     no more (shhhhhh!)

And to the feathered hat woman--

I'm sorry, ma'am, but I was eleven, and
that joke was too damn good not to
laugh at

Friday, September 18, 2009

Poem for Friday, September 18, 2009


Red, White, and Red

Freewill enterprise, tarnished.
      I know what we have become, and you,
blue-collar, know that being humble
      is by far a man's best quality (I can't
      disagree).

I love you, America, and to this
day, I'll still preserve your falling flag
      among the burning and the rubble. I'll fold
it neatly and put it in a safe place
      before I spontaneously combust

because I'm a goddamn 
patriot.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Poem for Tuesday, September 15, 2009


God Wears a Cardigan

From a mahogany desk in heaven, God
      spins the earth (a quaint bookend/paperweight);

      his finger

lands on fall. While people are worrying
about how they will eat and
what books they must read, I am only
      concerned about finding
      the ideal cardigan:
 
      six buttons, cotton or wool, a color
      that accentuates my Anglo features
      (in case you're wondering).

Something that disappears in a
maelstrom of leaves. I want to be
       naked like birth.

Because
   I plan on sitting on my porch,
   calm and crapulent,
   contemplative and brain dead.

I don't want to look uncouth 
in the process.

Back in heaven, God wears
   a cardigan, too--
   the last three buttons undone on Fridays.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Poem for Sunday, September 13, 2009

I think this might be the final portion of "Coming Down", and I've had a lot of fun with this. It's the longest poem I've ever written (I'll write one longer someday, hopefully). I'm stoked.


"Coming Down" (continued)

X.

Almost down, I tried one last means of
pick-me-up: nitrous oxide in frigid mini-metallic
cannisters. Forty seconds of pure happiness and
             cheek numbing.

If you make a buck and want to squander it on an
ultra-ephemeral escape, go with the         cannisters.
             But, I'm beyond that.

Who am I?
Who am I now, father, mother, brother, grandmother?

The tarnished golden child, perhaps.
     My beautiful Au element has been reduced to what?
          Who cares!

          Who cares?!

Coming down, totally, righteously, I prepare to head
into the concert past you, girl on the concrete steps,
and enjoy my vigil out of 
                        agrarian suburbia.

Icarus's wings caught aflame,
Dionysus got too drunk,
Socrates warned us all (that impious fuck).

The moon still exists, and it's cold, so
never mind that.                   Enough about
                                               celestial bodies!

Under the saline sea, an octopus
reproduces, multitudes of new tentacles and
          opaque defensive ink.

I think of The Beatles first. 
  I think of the Beats second.

When do I think of you and I? Never 
         (it would only
          kill us).

I am a poet.
I am a linguist.
I
want
what's best for humankind.

In         the United States, Canada, Mexico,
            Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay,
            Suriname, Iceland, England,
Ireland, Sweden, Finland,
Norway, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands,
Poland, Austria, Albania, Romania,
            Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Turkey,
            Russia, the Caucuses, India, Saudi
            Arabia, Egypt, Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania,
Nigeria, Congo, Rwanda, South Africa,
Madagascar, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, South
            Korea, Mongolia, China, Japan, Australia,
            and any other nation or principality
I neglected to mention--
there exists a human struggle.
POETIC struggle.

My function, my sole purpose (according
to the refracting light that I see
behind my blue-green irises) in the name
of               breath, knowledge, and sacredness:
      to represent humanity and poetry. 
I love you all,
      and that's my curse.

I'm still coming down.
I'm still witnessing visions and blunt reality.

Local people, foreign cities, preposterous
dreams, cruel circumstances, love.
I'll consume all of these entities in the
ultimate smoothie of existence (a semi-
Bohemian method)!

Let me drink!
Let me eat!
Let me live!

The Beats would be laughing, telling me to
           go on.

My relatives would be lock-jawed, telling me to
           go on.

I, I, I, I, I!
I, I, I, I, me!

The Athenians still weep over the fires
consuming their land (I haven't
forgotten you).

Olive oil and balsamic vinegar can only go so far.

Here is as far as I'll go, forever:

LOVE stings and burns, but
endure it; it's nothing more than
missing the Greyhound at a mediocre
bus station, after all. 
                              Book your next
                              ticket. Make
                              your next escape.

Breathe glorious, glorious oxygen in the lungs of
EVERYTHING
you want to be 
                        alive.

I
am
down (sober, 
                  reluctant, 
                                 listen).



Friday, September 11, 2009

Poem for Friday, September 11, 2009


Coming Down (continued)

IX.

The moon is hiding behind an armada
of nocturnal vapor and nothing more, a
porous fleet that only trickles water when
     it could drown us all.

I understand.

A little boy fell off his scooter and skinned
his knee, crying out for sympathy. My brother
    of the half Orient and I, we saw him and
walked to his aid, drunk:
    "You okay, buddy?"
    "You alright, man?"
And his pupils dilated in horror when he
smelled the gin on our breaths and saw the
milk in our eyes, but at least
      he stopped
                        crying.

But I can't stop crying now--
manly brother has inherited a poisonous seed
from weeping father, and I
      feel guilty. I, the older, wish that I could
bear it, but genetics is a fucking mind warp.
Chromosomes, fusion, mutation--
our skin, our consciousness is a mere facade!

I cry for the little boy.
I cry for manly brother.
I cry for genetics.

Almost a decade ago, airplanes bomb(arded)
          industrious American skyscrapers. An
indirect beheading of white by brown. A
pure betrayal of physics and human decency
altogether, but someone must live
          to tell about it, to warn YOU.

You, who are reading this in between
          masturbation sessions.
You, fellow
                  human (nice to meet you).

I'm still coming down.

By law and by hormones, I am a man now,
      but by life skills I am a boy, and I
lollygag and daydream even more than
a boy (the scooter boy). I dream
                 kaleidoscopic visions, multicolored,
                 the ingenuity of Union Pacific against
                 steel rails and the droning choo-choo (beckons
me to sleep) but I remain awake.

One Beat used spontaneous prose, another used
acid, and the others just used life. I want to shake all
of their hands, intellectually masturbate with them, and
                 buy them lunch at a quaint Thai restaurant.

I returned to the place with persimmon lights and the
death tree--the place my brother of the half Orient
and I traversed to. I was not drunk off beer this time, but
        something else:

She was not you, girl on the concrete steps.
She is not you.
She
      is
         a flawless product of a Dravidian language, music, and
         raw human emotion. Jet black hair and encourager of
         conversation. Magnetic lips.
She makes me happy.

Revelation: we can never be solely happy.

I thought I was, but I also feel guilty, manly brother.
You got the poison, but I didn't.
Just don't let medicine--a gross adulteration of natural, 
beautiful herbs--control you down to your
         valiant motor skills.

Do you remember when we rolled each other
in trash cans down an aisle in a pharmacy?
Do you remember when I was stupid and
punched you in the stomach for no reason?
Do you remember when I gave my soul to you?

I do.

Tomorrow, you will embrace academia, saunter
     through a library and smell the must of books
     older than our ancestors (I envy you).

Tonight, though, we both
                                     rest.
We rest less blissfully than we used to because
the moon and its armada are closing in,
fierce as ancient Spain, accurate as ancient
Portugal, malignant as ancient religion.

But, we rest, nonetheless.


Sunday, September 6, 2009

Poem for Sunday, September 6th, 2009


Coming Down (continued)

VIII.

I met with a Russian lad and propositioned him--
he'll teach me as much of the Russian
language as he knows for booze each week.
      Fair enough.
I saw him at a party the other night, and he
offered me some swigs of his scotch. I took them
valiantly, and he shook my hand afterwards.
      Positive, glorious international relations.

And I have not forgotten about you,
weeping father, beloved mother, manly brother, Stoic
grandmother.

In the meantime, I help my Saudi Arabian friend.
We've talked of English grammar and U.S.-Middle Eastern
relations, and we can still hug each other at the end
of these seemingly controversial conversations.

I take pride in the world.

There is an icon with two hands cupping a microphone, and
I'm not sure
                                 what it means.
Should I sing? Should I streak? Should I proclaim,
"Hey, world, I'm "right-brained," and I don't
                                                                  give a
                                                                  fuck!"?

Where I am not is an odd, eccentric place.
I think of my past teachers/professors and their intentions--
some were good, some were
                                                 selfish.
All were human.

I have no doubt that all the homeless are
weeping right now. They cry for food, for shelter,
for validation.
                         I wish I could give them everything,
but I can only give them shitty poetry (such
                                                                      is life).

Surely, that cannot sustain a human life force
longer than water, food, shelter.
                      But, I have prepared pizza.

I have told you all that I might travel to the
"-stan" countries (Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmeni-
stan, etc.), and my weeping
father begs for my life. Maktub--it is written.

I can only tell him that I want to travel the world,
trek across sand dunes, hug Muslims, be young,
teach children a dominant language.

My Russian understands.

A misty morning, smothered in dew and
various scientific practices confront me (as
              long as it's cold, I don't
              care).
I'm still coming down, and a voice, a spirit,
tells me I have to ascend with it: am I ready?

Am I ready to transcend?
Am I ready to relinquish my earthly projects?
Am I ready to abandon any hope of love (for
       a presumably flawless, golden afterlife)?

NO.

In the end, I'll be sprawled out all over the
sidewalk, and the moon and Venus
will shine over me. Beams of photons and
        inspiration will luminously shine above me, and
I'll hear a distant astronaut say,
        "Come here! Learn of our ways (what can
I say?)!"

NO.

The truth is, if Earth spontaneously combusted
or shriveled up into a celestial prune,
I would be here with it.

I'm willing to suffocate for you,
girl on the concrete steps.
I'm willing to say to everyone I thought I knew,
"I'm sorry, I can't make it. I can't be with you."

That's love.
                  I embody love (or a hideous imposter).