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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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).