Saturday, August 10, 2024

STAN'S LETTER

 

Stan's letter

weighs on my mind

the world is too full of sorrow

and fathers too full

of forgetfulness

and more than his letter could have hoped

or attempted

to express


but this correspondence falls to me

where far from his son

Stan's new dreams begin

literary criticism

is still already at work

I cannot tell him this


departure from the anarchy of my sphere

will come at a cost

but a cost

    and for a benefit

that benefits no one


but it's too late now

for me to recommend 

to Stan the benefits I have found

in the receding confines of my dream

(still the old dream)

where my sons 

I fervently hope (for such is my plan)

can always find me dreaming






Saturday, August 03, 2024

And a sane man will have none of them

 

a paraphrase of Tao Te Ching 24


If you stand on tiptoe

pretty soon you’re just teetering: try it.


When you’re all in a hurry

you never get anywhere.


Trying to make yourself a star

your light flickers low.


When you try hard to make an impression on people

sane ones lose interest.


Trying to be the boss

you dwell in chaos.


If there is some reason for you to be here

be honest about it,

do that thing

and then stop.








Thursday, August 01, 2024

NEW KIN


Your kinship with the insane 

when once you learn of it

will put your shit list 

into brutal perspective

your stomach will never be the same


carrion-brain

weird leisure, shining forms 

twisted into vague ideals,

activity impersonating life

and practicing myriad ills

among your kinfolk:

expressionless

clan of leisurely monsters


with no recollection of anything good












Saturday, June 08, 2024

SERMO THOMAS AD PABLONEM

 

Good grief, Pablo

your insane gifts are freaking me out


my mind since I gave up preaching is

as you know tenderly susceptible

to all gestures

& also material objects in the form

of petits cadeaux, and especially

the Waylon Jennings album (you know it for my favorite)

the biography of the anarchist

these have shaken me at the atomic level

from which as Lucretius teaches us

everything flows

from exiguum clinamen

to magnum opus


it is good that I gave up preaching

who knew it lay so deep in my genetics?

But was it not Ebenezer Crofts who 150 years ago

came all the way from Kent

to Texas that he might give,

as he taught us, "full vent to my preachments"?

Not an ignoble reason to relocate

but still, for me, now, unworkable

in poetry

that that coin finally dropped

gaudeamus igitur

am I right?


no Pablo: no more preaching for me


it's all prophecy now






Sunday, May 26, 2024

WHAT IS A POET LIKE


a poet is like

a geiger counter

one isn't sure

is working properly 






Tuesday, May 21, 2024

THE COMING WEIRDNESS

 

everyone will have to gather strength

where they can

wiles and defenses if you do not have them

must be learned


you may not see me

for days at a time I'll be gone

but this should not in the least

be of any concern:

though I have no strength

nor any skills to speak of

it's OK 

until i can make it back 

i promise

my self-loathing will always see me through







Saturday, May 11, 2024

TOMORROW

 

“To those who do not know that the world is on fire, I have nothing to say.”

--Bertolt Brecht 


the sky will burn a pale sunset 

for your national epic

painted in broad strokes

executed

with you in mind 


beginning in bland strokes

like a chemical burn

whose origin and gradual spread

at first

you'll barely discern


you'll go on sensing nothing in fact

until it's hard to tell

if it’s dawn, or sunset, or noon

or hell

and then you’ll feel something:

look for it soon


because it will scorch even the eastern horizon






Thursday, May 09, 2024

TODAY


revelation always interrupted by dropping of darkness

or another distraction

in a maze of fading

possibilities

friend you’ll just have to lobster it out

still, your instantaneous kinship with the dead

when the coin finally drops

I assure you

will put your shit-list in brutal perspective







 




Wednesday, May 08, 2024

ORACULUM NEGATUM

 

Instead of perfume there will be rottenness;

and instead of a girdle, a rope;

and instead of well-set hair, baldness;

and instead of a rich robe, a girding of sackcloth;

instead of beauty, shame.

Your men shall fall by the sword and your mighty men in battle.

And her gates shall lament and mourn;

ravaged, she shall sit on the ground.

Isaiah 3.24ff

 

 

But that won’t happen to me

no

that will never happen to me

 

the campaign has just begun

it's the first day of spring

and I'm immortal




 

Tuesday, May 07, 2024

HISTORY LESSON

 


we have been sowing 

and living in

such garbage garbage

for so long

and subject for so long

to dodgy cartoons

bad sound

and jerky animation

characters clearly insane

voiced by vaguely familiar voices

to say nothing of the iffy coloration

all relieved only by commercial breaks

gouging us

on many levels

 

the world’s too sad to be reported

dreaming wiggling children

smile from far away

from far too far away

but not too far away

 

we watched tv

and went to sleep

others loaded amnesiac bullets

for sleepless bastards

who died allover the world for our precious                  freedoms

but you know

they were very low-utility freedoms

 how can ordinary human behavior

result in so much pain?

too bad for you


empires die like suns


trying to vomit I see only stars




Saturday, May 04, 2024

SAINTS

 

a lot of people get saints wrong

so i'll break it down

and then there can be no mistake


a saint might have eaten shit

in an elaborate way

at the hands of a roman

or barbarian king


a saint might have levitated or learned

the cure for madness or rabies


a saint might have endured years

at the top of a mountain

or in the dark recess of a cave


but these things make them awesome 

not saints

they must all be re-evaluated


i'll tell you what a saint is

and then you can canonize

whoever you want:


a saint is anyone 

who tears a hole in reality

from the outside





Saturday, April 13, 2024

CONCENTRATION



bad dream

like moon in

pig water


bad water

like moon in

pig dream


bad moon

like pig in

dream water


bad pig

like dream in

moon water






Wednesday, April 03, 2024

ANTHROPOS APTEROS

 


last night somebody 

got high

and ate my wings





Sunday, March 24, 2024

READY?


from a standing position

shuck pyjamas 

and without falling down

get dressed 

underwear t-shirt

shirt pants socks

as fast as humanly possible

so you don't have to see your body





Friday, March 22, 2024

C U IN HELL


What are you saving that stationery for you freak

those golden days

when you will be at your escritoire?

dashing off cards? 

bent over loving letters?

those days aren't coming


No, somewhere along the line those days have been changed into

stupid dreams nobody wants to hear about 

it’s not your fault

the world will do that: take a turn

which like a horde of bullshit butterflies

changes everything. 

                            Everything.


And then what had seemed perfectly reasonable

in terms of plans

is transformed into 

ridiculous jokes

like sitting in a chair reading a book

or learning Italian 

or as I’m saying now

sitting at your desk

and writing me a letter


in which you will say

(in ways only you still can I bet)

how much you miss me

and really appreciate the slow but steady progress

my poems are making


if we can only dodge time’s preemptive terror

and butterfly bitch-smoke

i bet we can use up our stationery


but we gotta act fast

don’t think about it:

just grab a card and write ‘c u in hell

and put a stamp on it 

just write ‘Wake up asshole’

don’t even sign it


I’ll get it

and I’ll read it

and whatever it says

I’ll know what you mean








Sunday, March 17, 2024

BEFORE WE CONTINUE


before we continue

don't hate me

or at least don't hate me because

my prophecies are always

correct

    like 100% correct


it's not my fault

            you see

i was born with a crystal ball

instead of a heart


all i have to do is peer into the damn thing

for a moment

and, well, you already know


i'll admit one or two minor events

have surprised me

but regarding the big things

and the deep things

and the things

that move in darkness

all around us

right now

my crystal ball have never let me down


not once










Friday, March 15, 2024

FIRST DAY OF SPRING

to the doves remaking their nest

outside the kitchen

and who flip out

every time I open the window

i say chill freakazoids


to the young environmentalist

who referred to me as

        a boomer

i say 

        excuse me

                    missy


i am generation X

and will thank you just

to remember that


to my dogs who will not stop barking

at coyotes and delivery trucks

with equal fury i say

keep it up


to Solaima I say

stand by:

the poem is on its way


to everybody else 

thrashing around in the whole end-of-days

scenario

 i say:

don't have a hyper-spaz


it hasn't even started yet


Monday, March 11, 2024

IN APOCALYPSIN

 

what boneheads everywhere

fail to grasp

but which they will learn

may be found under Apocalypse, the

in my upcoming glossary

apocalypse is not 

the event itself

happening in the unspecific future

not that occasion

when the comet of many fucks

will turn the sky

the color of dogshit

make everything seethe and boil and bubble

            with eruptions and awesome

            slime from the crypts 

(however much those things will

all happen to you) but no

the apocalypse is not an event at all 

but the uncovering 

a thing already happening

full-on


that is why I am conducting a sun


come with me

radiant one

we will occupy that age

that aeon

    between breaths

    and deaths

    and flares

    and stairs

and make our sauts de cabri

through caves

and graves

and river valleys

and well lit alleys


and crown the dying world with a verse:

whatever one, let's say, is not too burnt

at the end of our long day

though it will surely

be partially burnt











                               





Sunday, March 10, 2024

NEXT!


butterfly harming

pesticles already

in my blood!


fascists are visible

in that reddish cloud

in my urine


a cologne called

"Vanity of Monsters"

is all up in my olfactory

region

and i love it


i dine on plankton

and whale


petition's not gonna cut it





Saturday, March 09, 2024

CARNAL READING

 

pace St. Augustine

at the end of the day

very few meanings are spiritual

in the literal sense of the word