It's a Sad Thing

Ya know, it's a sad thing
Going to the funeral
Of a friend.  Just sad.
Ya know you're gonna
Miss seeing them around.
Now then, see, going to
The funeral of an asshole
Is a laughin', knee slappin',
Ear to ear grinnin' time.
The old hateful varmint
Is justa lyin' there in the box.
Stake for the heart, crucifix,
And garlic on hand just in case.
You wonder what they're
Up to now they're in Satan's
Happy go lucky playground.
Stoke that furnace.  No way
Are there any breaks there.
That ice cream and cold beer
Are just for looks.  Want some?
Hell no!  Get your ass back to
Work!  Fun, ain't it? 

Cheese Icarus

 
Peripheral
paraphernalia burned
away, Icarus is
the cheese
that stands
alone,
porous like
Swiss,
greening like
gorgonzola—
sun-grilled,
sandwiched
between
sky & sea,
melting into tailless
tuna in the oily
Aegean.

M.C. Escher
convergence of
fish & bird,
Icarus is
also a mosaic
piece, a
nursery rhyme
fragment, cast-
away fingernail
paring; a floating
obscene
signifier—
but always,
the solitary
cheese; single
waxy Kraft
slice, residue
of manufactured
American
hunger, standing
alone. 

Statement adapted from the letters of A. Scott Buch:

How is one to meaningfully define an underground? For it not to be simply an alternative establishment, it needs to have aims, philosophies, and systems, which are in structural opposition to the status quo. One feature of our status quo from my critical perspective, is that it postures as if fame and fortune were legitimate possibilities; when in reality to achieve a mere baseline economic status is tantamount to a pipe dream. In truth, these are likely two sides of the same coin. This is what the underground should stand to correct. It should attempt to reverse the fictitious ideology into a material reality where baseline economic status was possible. However this comes with a project of needing to call out the ideology of fame and fortune as the establishment’s carrot on a stick—one that later asserts a force on the artist which effectively makes one 'sell out.' Really, the model of fame and fortune is what robs everybody who could be a great poet, or artist, from being able to make a living. So the practical goal of an underground should be to challenge the norm that, but an elite lucky few can make a living from poetry. It should be to set out to squash and demystify, the carrot on a stick of wealth and fame which obfuscates the fact that it won’t even give us mere food and rent. The twofold position to emphasize here at the end is: That writing is work worth being compensated. AND can we not glimpse a different picture of work beyond the vulgar ideological notion it’s only as valuable as its mirror image in a token of money? For a radical poet, no? the underground should mean a mutual aid of artists in the form of a community. And where that human relating is more valuable than—although, for a time, not entirely a viable alternative—to being paid?



“Light Through The Cracks”

In my solitude,
I pen the names Julian and Stella,
And think of the sadness from son to father,
The warm noble face of John Shipton,
And imagining that an Empire of lies will fall
As a family is reunited.
I have been alone in my worries
As long as you were captured and imprisoned for publishing truth,
As long as the apathy of a nation has been amnesiac
Of the crimes of their government,
For as long as waking up to truth, in the imperial core,
Is as the construction of a solitary jail cell.
Rather than the deterioration of your person,
May these structures collapse in all their evil glory,
Around the sky and the star.



“I Cannot Eat From My Writing, Nor Is Assange Free, Though One May Not See A Connection”

No, the platform should not be owned.
No I shall not let the grave power of a name,
Become the object of burden like the depressed weight of neglect.
I won’t abide by these dotted-line borders like pissing-corners,
I won’t assume all social interaction can be narrowed
Like backalleys of the destitute
Into following, and quantities of who has followed.
The cowards in towers built on pretensions to authority
Leaves the drive to freedom homeless.
Then if we are left without an image,
If we are left without a picturesque of nature,
Without a joy in the vacuity of text;
Judge us for our lack of aesthetics,
Ignore us as the arbitrariness of power is free to do;
Give us not visibility in our humanness for our bread.
Take on your marquees, where you select, and produce value,
Like a god out of a severed penis.
No how ‘bout I go out demystified,
Say in a hail of bullets of being looked over for all time;
That a real person one day might be my validation
Like that of a true friend.
Let the walls of value not be drawn in the immoral scarcity
Applied to human living in economics,
Where all is an ossifying competition
In a world ruled by compulsion.
Where though one has never been to Belmarsh
They are subject to suffering
From the walls of unmovable power;
Granting the arrogance of oppression never to budge,
Despite the truth of its injustice being as naked as the huddled and abused
Who trembles from the years confined and solitary.
It becomes a constant scenery flipping indifferently past;
Like walking for miles on miles
Surrounded to the horizon
By countless crucified individuals.
In a slave rebellion we are never able to full win

Scarecrow

   ----Summer, 1969, China

An eleven-year-old boy
Visiting his mother at a labor camp
Under the scorching hot sun

He saw a scarecrow
Squatting on the side of
A rice paddy field

As he approached it
He was scared to find out
That’s his mother

Crapshoot

 
One way or the other,
Your luck runs dry—
Intended or not.
And the deed’s done,
Before you have the chance
To relinquish the game.
You can measure the odds,
But be prepared for trouble,
Right out of the box.
Sure, you may hit a jackpot,
Turn table after table,
Up and down the street.
I guess it could happen.
That’s why it’s worth a throw;
Wager high, wager low.
What have you got to lose?
Yes, when in doubt, roll the dice—
Until the moment you crap out.



Game

 
They say you got it,
Or you ain’t:
The walk, the flash,
The talk, the cash.
I see it on the street.
Watch the game played
By guys half my size,
Who duck and weave,
Shuck and jive.
Believe they know
The ebb and flow.
Climb walls of rhythm,
Rhyme by rhyme.
Sing perfect words
And capture time.

Driving 154 m.p.h.

on the Northway
drugged up and drunk
snapchatting behind
the wheel, not some
wild country western
song, not a music video
and U tube sensation
but the newspaper headline,
the lead in a vehicular
homicide trial all local
TV stations covered.
What happens when
you total two cars, kill
young woman on the way
home from night classes
taken to try and get ahead.
She left behind two small
children. Even without
shackles and leg chains,
he walks with a limp now.
Something to remember her
by every day of his life.

one bullet


there is death

in the kitchen
and
there is sorrow
in my belly
for the mother
next door
who lives a life
like
dripping faucets
running toilets
monotonous
mad
she confesses
with the fury
of ants
cold beetle stories
of youth
run from her tongue
into my ear
she shakes and cries
for lunch line ladies
missed sunday sermons
and the man
who stopped
one afternoon while
the children were
at a school
as my arm finds hers
i commit with knowing tone
another friendly fatality
"it'll be alright"
the stains are brighter than blood

Depression Settling In

I thought that
Maybe a funny film
Would brighten
My outlook on life.
Yeah, Woody Allen
Made some movies
With mega laughs.
Only one I could find
At the movie rental
Was Manhattan,
Woody’s so called
Art film. Hadn’t seen it.
An hour and a half
Not even a chuckle.
Now my depression
Is a permanent state.
Hannah and her sisters
Should kick his ass.

Winter.

The changing weather of
Winter is masked.
Sometimes a little grey all along
That bruised my palm
All alone as if hanging
The dewdrops in a muddy bowl
The flowers are sordid
A little pansy, shiver stricken
I took my notepads out in the
Blueish grey
The parchment of winter hang around
Drinking, seemed a little noble
As it stitched my past
Into grey sweaters
The touch and go all ripened
And new at the same time
The falcon flew over all along
Waiting for the winter
A little long with grey walls
Of fortresses.



Choir.

Sunday, an epiphany found
Breeze toiling outside the church
A Shepherdess in warm moonshine
A prosaic piece of some bliss
Writing with changing weather
An ever brimming motion
With each cessation a new sun rises
And Swirls in outside venture
The autumn aurora came
A little too late
Bringing forth history
Nation's bringing clamor
Epiphanies shoven into
My cosmic zeal of a suspense high
Then I found bright torpor of choir
Singing an ever brimming motion
Writing delivering with churches
The sun shone a flagship high
For autumn that came a little too late.

GRIND

 
Rows of mute zombies face opposing laptop
backs towards each other, run their fingers
down sleek display designs, and caress
their smartphones. Why work seven days a week
just to toil at the coffeehouse at night?
Remember playing chess and boardgames
at the café? Reading dogeared paperbacks
from the ‘take a book, leave a book’ library?
Listening to an acoustic guitar get drowned
out by a coffee grinder during an open mic?
Before the Internet went public and killed
the community. Before everyone retreated
into their own sphere, earbuds in, tuning
one another out, attention spans annihilated.
Before cellphone addicts texted fellow addicts
sitting right next to them. Pick up a book!
Or start a conversation without using
your phone. Wave your hands excitedly
when you talk. Don’t let your laptop leech
too much of your life energy. Tip your barista,
and remember to buy more than one coffee
every four hours. Capisce?