Zero

Zero was
this idea the Arabs had
of not-quite-infinity
but back to before we knew
The Promise of Something
This Zero holds the space
before the blossoming
into cataclysm.
It is the moment before the Universe.
It was when we were all friends of God.
The Zero said "So it was
And shall be forever."
"In my Emptiness, I am Full
and
You always return back to me."
Zero is the holding in your hand
of things you cannot hold.
12/28/11

Tinker

I am tinkering with things
Making experimental sounds now
To replace breath and all the words we use for normal things
Art to replace the heart
Whether it breaks or
Tears or
Buoys up or
Understands the concept of solitude.
Movement, to replace
The pedestrian bump and grind
Constructions and concoctions to honor
An elusive modernity.

I am slightly more free
And there is a little more of me
Scattered for posterity.

Play.
12/21/2011

Break the Vessels

As day shatters into night
So there were pinpricks upon the universe
Then, holes in our theory
Time had a place and
There was finally a point, alpha and omega
And we were everywhere
And the God who was holding me hostage--
I told him to go home
in his fucking clown suit
as I wrestled down my brother for the kill and said
"We will have a second time over
but during this one
I will have to look into your eyes when I do it."
Our only conscience was ourselves.

Break the vessels
Open the portals to tormenting devils
Slack-mouthed preachers intoning in just the right wavelength for ceremonial brainwashing
In this ending, I still pull your gold teeth out for money
And piss on your partially incinerated corpse, it being attired only in hijab
But this time, there is no flag behind me, no army
No inflated sense of righteousness;
Just the proper amount of sense that we all made in the first place
To force us fully
To understand
Exactly how
We run,
Knock-kneed
To our petty, shit-covered death.

12/21/11

Stars

Stars

"Take me up to the top of the city."- Kate Bush

We strain our eyes hard
To see stars
In the city
But the lights of urban glory-cathedrals
Have pushed them out.

Follow me
We'll look off the edge
And pretend it isn't a plunge.
Our strength lies
in steel skeletons.

12/21/11

You Can Never Go Backwards

Staring into black liquid now

before the spark appears

it’s dark

but just in time

to see pictures

of all that could be.

Season of lights

Reflections from within

we contemplate

to create

close the eyes

shut out the din

And walk.

Walk forward.

12/16/2011

Half (Deny, Refuse and Bar the Doors)

Half

"You are half of one of them," he said.
I replied to him defensively, as if he had violated my inner pride:
"How did you know?"
If the time came, I would not be one of them
And I would not give shelter if they were rounded up,
I have the marks that make me not-one
Yet you see and say, as if nature knows.
I perceive that
I am enough to pass.
I beg of you, don't give me away
For I tell you, this half has not formed
The me I am today.

12/2/11

What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas (TM)

I am tired of these radio commercials
that say
"What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas"
or
"Fight your DUI."
Sure...
we promise
we won't rat you out--
just give us money,
then it will not matter.
That's ok.
Really, you're only accountable
to yourself.


11/29/11

Tides (Liquid Sisyphean)

"Lash'd to this ship sail I

Upon everlasting current

Borne rudderless

But compass'd

I weary of the sea all around.

Green gull'd and gulleted,

Sad that this is the sickness;

Only drowning the cure.

11/17/11

The 90s (Romanced by the Past)

The 90s called

They want to see you
Half-naked
On your boyfriend's bed

With no particular dreams
Wet underwear
Empty bottles
Prozac Nation self-mutilation
Endless stupidity on your parents' dime

They want to know your age, sex and location
(When you never knew any of those)

They want to send you
Fake plastic trees
and
Flowers in December.

11/14/11

Crone

Crone

Caught upon the strains of antiquity
Brought to subtle boil
Mark'd only by bouts of sleep
Tagged and winged in past error
This poison's potion turned me grey
And this life turned me crone.

What have I lost?
So much and yet so little.
Only pen's ink, needle's thread
And misted heart-drops in a vast ocean.

Crone and not-crone
Calligraphed here on my skin.
10/20/11

Descent

These things I attach, end-to-end
Crafted by my own hand.
I think only this will remain after I have gone
And even this disintegrates.
I must collect what lasts for now.
It is as if I pull magic trick handkerchiefs from my womb--
Even these pretty poses fade, and bright pictures rot.

I tried to bargain with the old Greek lady
But she said no.
I said: "You loved a man once, too."
And her eyes were knowing,
And I saw in her eyes the portrait of her young face.
And now I must bargain with dogs who live in the darkness
I must walk down alone, again, and deliver my missive in the room just before the room where they weigh hearts,
Where they say
"This one was good" and
"This one tried...but not enough."

I know better than to reason with Death.
Anubis, you are guardian of the in-between place.
Do not take her.
I walk into the Other Place to take you back.
Reason will not stay you, so action must.
You belong in the world above.
You are still needed.
I will crack the walls of this necropolis for love.
10/14/11

Disappointment

"I'm disappointed in you."
We say it as if there's always an expectation, a wall to hit.
As if we are a mirror of each other and one is supposed to make the other better
As if your failure is a shattered fragment of my own ego
With an infinity sign connecting the two.

One passes judgment on the other, because in them they see their own error:
A hoarse, strung-out vocal limping of a singer whom you knew was better,
A hoodwinked audience
Subjected to an instead-fizzled out drama and nonconfrontation.
We reach the hand inside our opposite and come up with nothing but heart.

I must admit, I had not known the poison of suffering as you did
Or walking a mile in your shoes.
I must admit it now.
But even so,
I was disappointed.
We chuckle this mouthful to ourselves, selfishly.

Charon

Charon

Usher to the other side
Unlikely midwife, birther of death
The last to see upon their leaving
We pay for safe passage.
To whom are we in gratitude?
To what are we still beholden?
You are not he or she with the answers.
Embrace the obscurity
and plunge.
10/9/11

I Have a Dayjob

I Have a Dayjob

I have written a story
By putting one foot in front of the other
I make art because I breathe
And I breathe
Because I make art.
I have made music my morning coffee
Trilling like the birds along with toothbrushing hiss
My eyes have opened
And I want more
Than pedestrian footfalls,
Important-sounding office shoes and
"TGIF" celebrations with sickening corporate sugar and extra whipped cream.
It's not all bad, I know
But I wonder now, at this point
If I can make the proper u-turns
To step in line again
Or if I will always be sticking my head out, peering over the shoulder of the man in front of me
Thinking of new words for the colors of the sunset.
7/18/11

The Old Man's Dwelling

The Old Man's Dwelling
(Coyote Hills)

I sit now
Some distance away from those in the acrylic dwellings
Chuckling to myself
Young Man Crow says that I am the son of a woman unmarried and that
I think too much for my own amusement.
What does he know?
He’s good at the word that the people with the gray skin call business.
But the gray-skins don’t know that my eyes are always on them
My laugh is the same as the hill
I am what they see when everything goes cross-eyed
You killed my people, my sons, and therefore
As revenge
I give you ridiculous death.
Also, they have come back twofold, tenfold.
Yes, now, in my time, I was the one who invented what you call
“Lies.”
You are all a pack of amateurs.
7/5/11

Container

Container

"I cannot help my condition"
Says the wise man or woman
But instead we are kept here
Feeling pain, in a temporary hole for those on their way to somewhere else.
Really, we do mean to improve
But unless the jar is voided, and everything runs out
It cannot be full again.
Open, and let it rain out
Down the Sisyphean hill.

7/5/11

Carnage Angel or, Judith in the Day Without Sword

Carnage Angel
or, Judith in the Day Without Sword

Primeval ward
Wrought daily with ignorance of his own guilt
Paid sorcerers of words
These spell-casters and manipulators are.
You will not escape the sword
Of they who judge the judges.
Arcane logic and
Archaic reasoning
Are not only on the side of power.
The ignorant eyes of the peons are bound.

Take the stand
To call out your abuser
It matters not--
These pens, barriers, boxes, courts and barracks
Are a divine cartoon.

You will end in a sweet light-flash
Borne up by angels of carrion
Flesh upon decaying flesh
We fantasize of doom pornography
But the real picture was
That we looked for his alcoholic charmer heart
And it was hollow.
Dead before we arrived to suck gleefully,
Let the carnage angel kiss out
Your unremembered vein-filling.

6/28/11

Quick Limerick (actually not)

Quick Limerick (actually not)

Blunt, bought beggars
Blew sick and twisted hips
Overshowered, but with rotting teeth
Meet the mark of hiding the memento mori
Carefully, but without fine-tuning
This goes towards its natural end
Walked, condemned to walk
Forward
In the sick, quick limerick of time
Stop here
Get off
The sentence has ended
This period is no more
You are free to go but
you don't realize
In all your efforts, you have effaced your face.

6/8/11

Saint Francis of the Asinine

Saint Francis of the Asinine

You have loosened something here, I see
A trapped flow
And now I am on the outside looking in
Watching it spill onto you.
I knew what it was, once, to be where you were
With downcast, contemplating eyes
And a love for taking in sick animals.
To sacrifice self is not the meat of this
You are not a martyr if the sick ignore you by choice;
You are ineffectual.
Save yourself, save your guts, save your blood.
Hope is wasted on the unwilling.

6/8/11

Change

Change

Change is coming.
That's good, right?
Time to be an uber rockstar.

Morning Glory

Morning Glory

Morning Glory poison
Bloodbath in purple brilliance
Tired of sinister mistaking
Waits
Passive in granting death
Its ghost came up the side of the house
Slowly
A stunningly beautiful creeper
Externally climbing
Acting on your insides.
5/10/11

Medication Shuffle

Medication Shuffle

The medication shuffle is a drag
You spend your time shivering
From one pocket of well-being
To the short-lived next one
You eat too much sometimes
Then want to eat nothing at others
You make up names for these intervals
You are a shell of the person they used to know
Into which and
Out of which
The sea of moods flows.
You are written off because you are crazy anyway
Because you will never prove that it's not just in your head.

Dance on the grave honoring your abandoned friends;
Do the medication shuffle.

Yield

Yield

Sign says "Yield."
I say
"No. Not this time."
(Well, maybe a little.)

Samael Tsabaoth (The Taking)

Samael Tsabaoth (The Taking)

My name is a refrain on the lips of all my people.
As I give to them, so do I take away.
Make me to lie down in bloodied pastures and irradiated fields,
Among the limbs of the slain and those taught to fire a gun from the time of their crying.
I am the bane of generations
I am the eradicator of races.
No one will be or was spared, even with atonements and blood on their doorposts
You have known that.
You are free to speak my name in your rites, for this name will be the last orgasm of your being into the rush of sweet sleep
Ironed over by bloody shroud.
Love me, fear me, cower before me, for I am the Angel of Death;
Not simply the angel of the Lord
But lord.
Your race has been contaminated.
4/16/11

Hetaerae

Hetaerae

Ashes on embers now
Not rekindled
In this house of a thousand women,
A thousand nights
And a thousand fat men
I remembered the one who gave me a boon--
Jewel-encrusted at bottom
Heady, sweet
Amber and almonds
The scent we scrubbed ourselves to be
The cave of our insides
That we veiled with incense.
I remembered once
Dog-on-the-Rug
He always brought it with him
As we made the gamos
(The first time, the dog thought I was dying when I cried out).
Warm baths anticipated,
Sleep, clouded by the right roots.
I was the fire when I was hetaerae
I was most-loved
Because I had the names of the Most Mighty
Etched into my skin.
Today, they will not grant me burial
In their necropolis.
Their horses trod over the soil that honored us, night by night
Their prophet says
“Love in this way bars you
From We Who Are Clean.”
Goodnight, goodnight
Remember the ember of my aeon.
When the Most Mighty was kissed in words on my skin.
“It is written.”
It is written.
Pricked onto me with blood.
Before this, I was queen
In the house of a thousand women.
3/8/11

The Shore

The Shore

One day my heart overflowed
And brought me to the edge of the memory
On which banked the shore that you loved so much.
And you were there, thinking of your fisherman father
And holding your baby’s hand
(Who’s now almost a man).
Together we glimpsed the smooth sand of this distant night.
Here, I loved every broken piece of you.
I whisper it now, when you’re long-gone
So I can be near the shore.
3/8/11

Purple (Judgment)

Purple (Judgment)

The royal leavings of the evening
Have a swiftness unmatched in their passing.
Where the tentative past decayed,
There bursts the enlightened present
And the intuitions, intimations
Of a shroud left behind.
In twilight, we come to light the lamp of wisdom
As we hold the final preparations close.
The wounded soldier, face and race obscured, grimaces as life rushes out
“I tried at this game called humanity
And purple was my heart
But I am not one to say whether my efforts were noble.”
Who lives with our deeds at the end?
2/12/11

Indigo

Indigo

She walked between things once
Valleys
And columns that held up the temple
Swathed and marked
With the memories of war
Long yardage
Stolen domesticity
Perfumed with almond scent
Dusky but near the hottest part of the flame
Clapping between her hands
Things known only at the time near sunset
When the desert cools;
The hour for which they have a special word.
2/11/11

Untitled

Who eats at the table of the arcane?
The taste blinds me.
In every living cell there is movement;
Stagnation is illusion.
See how the most delicate flower breathes.
My atoms are hurtling, hurtling.

3/1/11

Blue

Blue

Ran the river, mortal, past your sickbed
A clear-sided wash that you stepped into every day;
First baptism.
This was the fortitude in which I wrapped you, enough to break levees
Running so deeply beyond the visible world.
Our bodies, yours and mine, are material
And they were once both water, together
But the hue of my soul, fed to you as you fed me once
Was blue
Until you could walk again.
2/12/11

Green

Green

Oh little one, watered so
Springing shoots in the time of rebirth
Energized and calm with the luck of spirit.
A sapling is born, fortified and tender
Rooted in the eternally-renewing
Bring us thirsty mortals shade and cooling
For the hour grows hot, and the sun, beating
Takes to turn our impish green
To burnt and tired hues.
This is a color of sparkle in the eye
Best seeded, and brought to fruition.
2/12/11

Yellow

Yellow (Strength reversed)

Pissed away into false happiness and absent courage
The heart shirks, and wishes to be mild, smiling and to “have a nice day”
Present company intended.
One day you will wake up, your hand stained yellow
Your delicate doilies and dresses decaying
Gulped under the blindness that was near-white,
Too weak to be a constant candle.
So that yellow flame, then gold
Must turn to night’s dust.

2/12/11

Orange

Orange

Made shining by the formerly bleak, but now crepuscular
Futures in tin and metal boxes
Satiated, static sunrise unto a new suburb.
Sunny, but overly saccharine. My funny delight.
Be like dull but humorous cats, orange, in the night.

2/11/11

Red

Red

In sweet love’s surrender, crimson’s cinder;
The shadowed apple of sacrifice well-done.
Passion untendered but slowly simmered,
Vice rendered
Jokingly scarred with happenstance’s cruel pun.
Archaic and bold,
Fiery and old
My suffering’s meat in the making-
Every moment of it is for taking.
I have “red” and said
If I do not give my all in life
I am not waking.

2/11/11

Samael Tsabaoth

Samael Tsabaoth

Who is the one who assumes the place of the Almighty?
It is you.
I am the One.
Much has been said about the quest to walk on the left, left foot first.
I do not assume.
I am the almighty, angel of Heaven and Hell.
Split yourself in two
And you have already created the Lie.
You blaspheme with my duality.
I have chosen you.
Question the Divine.
I am the Angel of the Lord
And I watch over you.
Love is easy, but cunning and questioning take art.
Inquire, and you shall be rewarded.
Curiosity is the devil of religion
And the seed of belief.
You are free to speak my name, and write the letters.
I am within your reach.

2/6/11

The War of Art: Mediocrity

The War of Art: Mediocrity

I’ve cried and created
Catalogued and cremated
Run and dashed
Sabotaged and learned
Spilled over, lost my place
Been ignored, won the war
And now, it’s time.
It’s time.
This is me.
I can see my veins in the mirror.
This is not something I’m accustomed to.
My own art tastes prosaic and common in my mouth
And drapes me
In a glorious, formless potato sack.
“You are rough around the edges,” they say
But when am I not?
When am I not tasting like something else
That you want a lot more?
When is this greater than the sum of songs we sing to ourselves?
Give me a reason beyond.
Find.
Find.
Find.
1/16/11