Rocks

None of us even knew God had been dying this whole time until we got the news He was dead. A flash mob forced an old Jew to climb a tree and chirp like a bird. I was inside, tinkering with a machine I’d built for testing the concept that rocks communicate with each other. Despite a series of less than successful field trials, I wasn’t ready to say yet whether it was the machine or the concept that was flawed. I removed the outer casing, replaced the circuit board. A choir on the classical music station was singing something John Milton wrote when he was going blind.

 

 A Short Musical Interlude

The piano was already burning on the white sand beach when the virtuoso sat down to play. On the boardwalk, couples of all classes and ages began to twirl to the music. Even the undercover angels watching from a discreet distance tapped their feet. Just then an olive drab van accessorized like a mobile gas chamber screeched into the parking lot. As if that were some sort of signal, the universe suddenly disclosed itself – one stray black shoe lying at a precipitous angle at the edge of a mass grave.

Cloth of Choice  

Some days are spent in imagination
Some melt the pride.
Powerful and ticking seconds do not wait.
There is a feeling of waking up late
And performing the improper choir of time.
Metaphorically, rising is a gift.
The world has a makeup
Its wounds are scars of passing hours.
We open our arms and embrace
We stand the test of passing minutes
Till we become a tested blowing air
Gone directionless.
Finding the way is a meaning
Clinging to the last cliff of difficulty.
Let’s learn to breathe for one more mortal life,
Let's forgive for one more accepting while.
Tempests teach a lesson to the sea
The torch bearer knows the night.
Direction is not a void unless
Determination is a cloth of choice. 

brutal days ahead
 
there will be brutal
days ahead
 
the bodies will stack
up and the streets will
smell like a different
slice of hell each
passing day
 
war is not for the timid
 
or the weak
 
or the rich
 
war is for the ones
out of options
 
out of time
 
out of place in a society
that left them behind
decades ago
 
we're all going to die
someday
 
some get to have
their names in lights
 
others are for a dog
to piss on

NIGHT GENTLE

Stood in the doorway,
framed in dim
lighting,
the night, gentle
with
Lester Young
blowing like a
stoned
hummingbird,
she stood, crying,
quietly,
not in sadness,
she stood in the
doorway
and I wished that
I was a painter
or
composer,
she looked up,
at me,
her face wet with
our kind of love,
slowly, I moved
forward,
kissed her tears
and darkness
fell asleep.

 

SUNSET

Like she was injured,
she lay draped
over the stark sprawling
concrete landscapes
and the debris
of love,
strewn like
abandoned planets
or the memory
of slaves,
she lay exhausted,
spent,
her breath
darkening
the skies.

 

JOANNA, A POEM FOR YOU

It wasn’t the
ravages of time
or
the drugs and
alcohol
or
the harshness
of
homelessness
and
loneliness
or
the absence
of affection
or
the violence
of crazed
strangers
that killed
her,
no,
it was
life
that
took
her.

NAMING MYSELF AN X-GENE AFTER THE X-MEN WERE WIPED OUT.

 
At the mention of the apocalypse,I name myself an x-gene
Like a boy evaluating this machine era.

My body is flames and my memories are reinstalled in a chip
Like the waves of the waters carrying my mother’s face,

And this time I’m not bothered of how much men fear death,
This is only me adapting and learning the fire-dance

One Step On Coal One Breath,one way towards shore.
You carry all the bullets with your mouth

And spit holes into all the wrong places,
Every body believed my body was a wrong place

The X-men believed so much in the x-gene
And I have told God of how well I know my body and all the halos enshrouded in its bosom.

Smudging my fingers and counting the names of the homes on fire;
Clay, electromagnetic fields & flesh & blood are wired in here

And leaves are colliding in bottles of adopted embryos.
The last time I heard of the apocalypse 

I covered my eyes with light and drove into the horizon with highMusicPluggedInMyEars

And I couldn’t recite psalms,
A woman kept saying waalfajri and today I’m so certain the next ayah is Walayalin Aashrin 

So certain that this is god swearing ten days to my new age.
I fly into an uncolored television 

And my mother tells me a body is nai,
And death is fi, and she tells me nothing of reincarnation 

And I’m barricading my nostrils to breathe
To feel the sensation of a body on fire and how it adapts to a constellation of forgotten x-gene.

 

PSYCHOSIS AND PSYCHE.


In reality,
What; is; a; body?

Forehead; toes

Foreign regalias crocheting a pure day

                       12ft tall; beards;are;bushes; foresting a saint;

Sporting-waves;bleaching-skin

New voice;bass

New reality;night

               High school boys;dropping;out;of;school

Become;high; boys

Psyche;clock ticking towards a dead man

Psychosis; DID troubling a living man,psychopath

Psyche and psychosis;in reality,is a man writing a complex poem

Through the night and body of his 12 year old.

 

 

The Texture of Experience

The heat has been rising all day to an incinerating pitch. At the designated hour, I arrive at the address on foot, exhausted and dusty. It’s an old, dingy residential hotel on a sunbaked street in a rundown neighborhood prowled by starving dogs, their every rib sharply outlined. When I look up, squinting against the glaring sky, what appears to be an angel with a sword in its outstretched arm is hovering above the roof. Nothing like this happens here, a man who has materialized beside me says. I start to reply, but can’t. There are things that have no name even in the most poetic language.

The Nowhere Girl

I see the road narrow and forged
with the dead – all the dead
that tried before
to cross this very overgrown dusty path
sweep the dust right and left
critters scurry
bones scrape along pebbles
eerie sound of crunch and squish
oh hell it’s long
hell is long
isn’t it?
no way to tell
there’s no scriptures to follow
no engraved instructions
nothing for miles
not a fucking period to end
any forgotten sentence
it’s like a great emptiness
swells before me
in some organic burst
and I don’t know the road

Y’all think I came before
and am now an experienced craftsman
at roading
but no
I’m bleeding through this
teetering on a fork all twisted
with gnarled branches
it behooves me to stop
and take a piss
before going it again
Eeny meeny miny….
or just take the path
that looks treacherous
and wrecked?
if it’s a mess I’m all for it
got nothing else to do
and nowhere else to go

you will never have to be alone

 

Before you I was alone like a tunnel, but I didn’t know it

Birds fled from me and I believed there was a magic in my dying slowly

Then in the dark night while the wind disentangled itself from my body

I saw your eyes like constellations, playful but honest and unchanging

A silver gull slipped down from the east

My angel

 

My angel

I will carry you like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling

I will clasp you in my arms like a moonflower vine

I will be delicate because I know your heart is a paper crane and my hands are made of fire

And more than anything else, I will love you

My half of the moon,

White fire lily

Forge of blue metals

Cross over my heart and never let me go 

"Should Have Listened"

Hanging on with what I've done before
old as the years squeezing energy from me

my plans ironed into the veins on my arms
muscle and bone striking a constant pose

I had plenty of time and plans
secure in my strength and self destiny

I lost the finish line in my vanity
found God's Face in the dome of the sky

drip of His Tears cold on my face
running out from under can't be done

lightning strike
all the wars about to happen

I should have listened to the Good Book
the moon empty and stars scarring my dreams

the sea calm waiting for the coming storms
islands sinking with volcanoes exploding

tidal waves one after another
kids screaming under the shaking trees

women running in all directions
too pretty to spit at their disbelief

and the birds flying
little specks in the sky

passenger jets crashing into ships
skyscrapers falling into clouds of dust

all that I have seen
coming for years

should have listened
should have prepared.

Hard Core/Day One

Listen up!
Sit your asses down, mutants,
You punk-ass buncha freaks.
Shut up!
Look at my hair.  Take a good look.
What color is it?  It’s gray, isn’t it?
Let me tell you something.
You should be afraid, very afraid.
You should take what I say seriously.
Why?  You see,
Most men, in this profession,
Unless they’re good, very good,
Don’t last long enough for
Their hair to turn gray.
And this ‘gray hair’ is very good.
‘Very good’ at what I do.
So, you candy-ass pukes,
Pull your head out your ass,
Pay very close attention,
Do exactly as you’re told,
Learn from this experience,
And this will be the
Greatest second grade class
Ever to come from
Sparta Lincoln Elementary.



I Laughed

I laughed
In the face
Of Death.
In hindsight,
Possibly
Not
The best move.
No telling
How things
Will end up
When
I’m gone
To
The other side.
Perhaps
A Heavenly reward,
Perhaps
Endless torture
And frustration
If Death
Remembers
My
Blatant affront
To him.
I guess
I had better
Bring my own
Popsicles.