a slice of cheddar above little falls

it left me then, there on the river, i was an 

empty shell, floating

plastic, frozen

in time to the swiftly flowing

surface of things,

cold couldn’t scratch me,

as the sun,

lit a birds wings,

and the wax, 

filled in the cracks on the kitchen counter

where you told me to leave you,

again, and again, and again

in the crushing beauty

of that sunrise,

i was alone

though several others

were nearby, the sound

of the deadly waterfall,

was deafening

why go to the river?

when the banks are frozen,

and the geese honk softly 

happy to see each other make it

to the morning

when the sun, just barely

warms the mist, and the moon

sits, fat and yellow 

above the naked trees?

because

i too am 

a leaf 

of a vessel

poised above the whirlpool

and on the edge,

i find myself

the water next time (take 1)

to be read to night 1 of Ta-Ku Nights for Nujabes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fp1viiRJnw)

it’s cold dark and grey the sun still shines, illuminates, leaves turn golden yellow and they burn, back in the vacuum, the churn ceaselessly yearning to be free in the epitome of stupidity post turn of so-called century, they whorl and wonder what does it mean to be me? 

no apocalypse could free them more than the free dumb of being set loose from the mother branches, its natural, in the swirl they dance, making a human wonder why we all have to die, i sigh… deep into the shadows of the new york times, feeding my mind and takin a shit at the same time.

in there, 

i see the sheriff with his military hair, pressed into a shadow of tank, benefiting from obamacare's ex-military hardware, armored with the water they happy destroy, supposedly for dollars, in the middle of the night they deploy, and engage,

similar to another golden hair buffoon now lampooned as a hero or genocidal nero, custard or the monkey, it don’t matter.

throughout the times, they appoint their judges to pass criminal judgement on their authorized agents, supposedly gone rogue, when structural violence is in vogue, meanwhile they makin money off the same railroads to the mother lodes free-d up by genocidal beaters, now and then serving jail time for over-exuberant accomplishment of duty, getting corked and sporked by a system pretending to be the sole arbiter of self worth: when the president gonna stand trial for his genocidal smiles? something tells me never, they too clever (except maybe shrub in myanmar), wrapped in a systemic cloak of sadistic polite pleasure and driving fancy cars, taking measures of men, women and children, pressing them into chess or checkers, choose your adventure, either slave, worrier, warrior or whatever, in any case its better to get divided based on topical identities than analyze the weaponry of the mind keeping us divided and in line.

maybe they smart like a shark shirt, and we dumb fighting against oblivion, while they dining on champagne de domain du jour and oysters rom the seas they polluted while we worked the job convinced that we had to do it, poison our brains with the pain of contradictions, senses obliterated by our own convictions of right and wrong inherited from the strong and the weak, fuck, sometimes i feel like it don’t even do no good to speak, the human animal is bunch of soft cannibals suckin on the souls of those lower and higher on the stolen totem pole. or the hope burns that we can learn from history that we are all equally free to pursue our visions of wizardy or stupidity, or else get stomped by the speculative real estate market and 6000 years of hierarchical nonsense: in heat, blood, and water we born, the fire next time goes on, and so does the war, on and on and on.

on the way to the coffee shop to read Fanon

short brown men

bent double

under america

digging up the peonies, planting

the mums

  .

I wanted to rage, shoot, 

kill murder, maim

instead

I went to t.j. max,

and bought a new
pair of gloves.

.

All the billions in the buildings

going through the

car wash

leaking oil and gasoline

soap,

was making me 

itch,

fantastically

.

the office: furniture, self 

import, and struggle to

make the car payments.

servicing the debt

with 

the plunder

.

“A Nation of Savages”

.

and out in the land, the styrofoam and 

architecture

sags

into a decrepit beauty

.

it’s too much

my heart

 explodes

.

some think, suffering may lead us

to the light

others,

it's just a long
way
down

.

but the bricks don’t lie

they lay

stacked

on burnt

dead
bodies. exchanged

for piles 

of money

.

a yung black man, sweeps,

leaves into the garbage.

can the smell of traffic, stop a slow

slide into hopeful

despair?

.

out in the streets
they call it:

flares in the night

he grits his teeth

bears grin

at the moose

and shoot

.

maybe you tube 

videos

of the uncrushable spirit
human happiness

will save us

.

we are, after all

ancient beasts

crafty and wise

and the temporary evils

can in a moment of 

surprise

collapse

implode

from their own nearsighted stupidity

.

[someone else wrote]

the problem of evil

in complex societies

technologically sophisticated

and disjointed

may be perpetuated more

by passive acceptance

than any malevolent force

.

a cold sun lights the last yellow leaves 

and i’m not shivering

any more

.

monday, tuesday, comes

and through the morning tree light - the path becomes crowded, packs of wolf like men panting in spandex, the narrow lanes full of a rushing rushing rushing

along the river vistas a cold steam lifts, mingles with the exhaust, yellow, gold

the night cry softens, warmth 

seeps into the bones, the knee, starts to ache

monday: on the mall, women everywhere, breasts bouncing, smelling like watermelons

doing laps around the big cock (what tha fohk? I can see why it ain’t ever gonna stop)

tuesday: its squeegee day in the reflecting pool, big lawnmowers everywhere

roaring over the beaten ground.

Head as sieve for sifting rain

Dreary days when the brain is made to pay for all the time in play with neurochemistry, sleepily they all fade away but not the day when the motion is to fenestrate. Actually I'm awake, through the clouds I slake thirst and burst a bubble of sensitivity to the world, thence forth it's all proclivities, fuck a tv personality especially if their soliloquy ain't moving me, individuality, the bane of existence and yet we celebrate all our difference; and what should it be? Raindrops on the scene of nativity? Kaleidescopes elope into phantasmagoria of mental allegories of dystopian utopia, one pilgrims vision, is prison, which makes it escapable through all the books we've never written. An infinity of creativity resulting in endless words and scribbling, a snake eating tail type cosmos of circles within circles within circles and the color purple, Alice walkering through the ghetto on the bus, in lust we trust and discuss and the different ways society could spontaneously combust into laughter friends genuine questioning, sleep so happy naked into the mourning, upon happiness what depends? The staving off of ends? It all certainly hangs suspended   Swinging for cerebral psycho emotional appendages, blended with experience of fearing things, I'm scaring up the bots just to slay them, then through talk therapeutics to get rebooted, blasted out spoken word and was booted, hit the corner spot for some good shit but got pooh poohed and muted, fuck it, jus lemme listen to some legitimate music? Any suggestions from the cupids? Or the cute kids? Sometimes it all seems so intelligently stupid: fuck Donald trump and all the Larry summers type bullshit, I don't understand how after thirty years of blood in the sand society can't compute shit ! Blame the hype and the thirty second news cycle, or the lack of political influence of prince ...  Why mince words with the absurd? are we better of curbed or heard? Legend of the hamhock he ended up in drydock with the dry rot ... Whiskered up and liquored, hit the store till he got bored and sacrificed nice life for a Sasquatch wife and a really sharp knife. Out in the boonies with some loonies, couldn't get any more roomy than watching goonies on the shroomies, oh who he? Commander hamhock the pit boss crew chief? Double executives and cold blooded expletives jackin all the kids for their extra cred; went to college early, mighty squirrely, but didn't figure out the girl game till 11.30.1999, but what would you expect from a swine? To turn on a dime? Fly? Or just swashbuckle and shine? Obviously the mini ore is divine influence as I in the life death sentence of mixed blessings through repentance. Hey you! Get some freakin pants!

Swollen Knee Wrap

early am in NorthWest, 

limping down the street with a pocket full of pills,  muttering under his breath about the military industrial complex, 

yeah crazy as hell feelin unwell with the rest of em, sociopathic tendencies and world wide wrestling, breathe in the smell of gasoline dreams and fumes of brand new machines getting savage, 

getting savaged, mutually assured destruction ravaging the land like an old teflon frying pan, 

oh dearie me, pharmaco-industrio sweeps me,

up in sweet embrace of pretty face on the side of the bus sized like outta space, blowing all your fuses in confusion mental contusions get wrapped up in spiritual pollution, 

another day space cosmic revelation be blowin up my face, 

but they don’t care,

they just do the hundred yard stare,

straight past long hair on the sidewalk of early morning air, 

not good morning sir even in response, so i flaunt,

this jaunty broken knee walk,

smile and grin much to their chagrin,

the goddamn planet refuse to stop to spin, 

earth days seemingly the worse days, 

that’s why they pound the coffee even though they thirrsstayy, 

on the metro bus social scale dehydration and lust fuckin up! 

drinkin beer with the queers, as the weird,

 continue to pay professional sums to get dumb, 

fuck it kid suck your thumb in public and get sick like cleaning staph, 

bustin out the mops and brooms, sweep out the tomb, 

find a sarcophagus under six hundred millennia of dust, light a match, combust.

burning ohio

I took the small bank slip with my social security number on it and burned it. From the edges it turned grey black red till only a small shape, a heart, a wu-tang clan emblem, the state of ohio, was left. I burned Ohio.

Rock Creek Park (Wednesday, June 15, 2016)

laugh wiggle, the creek is clean, then shit infested

the herring highway, next to the parking lot of early morning Beach drive,

the big beaches, towering among the rocks, slowly birthing out of the clay. What grace among the rock maples, viburnums, low blueberries, asters, sorrel, pipsissiwa, partridge berry.

No swimming behind the zoo please.

.....


Single person in single car single person in single car single person in single car single person in single car ... you get the idea.

tree roots buckle the old asphalt, the fat tires are nice for bouncing, and the bike trailer gets some gees weaving up over the bridges, I hope Oona likes it. At least she doesn't complain.

We pass a cop, slow pedaling, unsteady as he gets onto the gravel to make way, knobs crunching, apologizing.


----

so many new cars so many new cars, old cars, new cars, single drivers single drivers (again? you might ask)

yes. the decrepit indebted materialistic soul of automotive culture is infesting the floodplain, driving over its own funneled feces, preparing to spectacularly explode into the drop pool riffle sequence as the rain clouds lower and lower and lower.

grill weather

It was an overly pleasant sunday evening in Northwestern DC. The day had started to cool, and the birds filled oranging sky with a muted, cheerful song. It was a fine night for a barbecue. Going to start the grill, he noticed the propane tank was empty. No matter, he thought, I’ll just pop down to the Shell station for a new one. Not wanting to drive, and fully conscious of the irony of burning up the diesel to get the propane, he grabbed his skateboard, and cheerfully swinging the empty propane tank he headed off down the road. He pushed up the short hill on 41st street. Carving downhill along the fall line towards Wisconsin Ave traffic was light, and drivers, caught up in the bucolic nature of the day, waved him on as he mellowed through several stop signed intersections. At the station, the man motioned through the window to leave the tank next to the rack, and he put it down with a soft clank before heading in to the store. 

After giving the attendant twenty nine dollars, they both went outside to the locked cage. Sorting through the 'cleaned and inspected' tanks, the man picked one out for him, considerably heavier than the empty. Oooff, he thought, well maybe this wasn’t the best idea. No matter, too late now. He pushed off, slightly wobbly with the new load, scooting out across the Avenue, beating a pack of cars off the green light, and swooped back into the residential neighborhood. It was a bit onerous going up hill, so he got off and walked a few blocks north to Harrison, where it was flat enough to start pushing again. He made the turn back onto 41st and started to speed up a bit down the hill. Just then, a woman in a black BMW SUV rolled through the stop sign at the end of Huntington and started to turn left immediately in front of him. Fuck! He carved hard to the right, just barely making it around the rear bumper of the SUV. He looked backward to see if she had even noticed, and just then hit something, a rock, he will never know what. Immediately airborne, he had just enough time to look back and catch the startled expression on the blond woman’s face in the side view mirror as he sailed, the propane tank carrying his arm up over his head. Catching his fall on his left forearm on the sidewalk, he started to roll as he had down so many times before, and then the tank connected with the grooved concrete of 41st street.

a crappy poem written while working

i had a friend

who told me

what’re you gonna do?

write a poem?

so I wrote this poem, for this friend

who doesn’t have a job, since he told me so long ago, that we had to work, 

and not write poems.

no one has a job,

we just steal time, 

from the cosmic uncertainty, press it into dollars, and smug ourselves rich while others hunger

starve, on our words, proffered after the tips of our rifles

is this it? civilization? built on the fence and the sword?

I might as well write a poem.

or build a house, and as I think, where does the money come from?

i dig a hole, into the gleyed matter below, extract the minerals, it fills with water,

and the pipes, freshly unrusted, carry it to the factory

belching smoke, as the wheels turn, toys for tots … it still doesn’t answer my question.

at the edge of the vegetable patch, by the sea, fish dry in the sun. and the lawyer fills his wallet with words words words, does this answer the question??

maybe it does, it’s all made up!

by that monkey with a gun.

or, by the poems that are dumb (like contracts), or ugly (like newspapers).

Four Poems, four/five/six/seven/eight sentences, more or less.

One

Dust from the feet of
crows
dead multitudes,

buried in the shallow atrium of the mind. He was 29 before he realized that to be a poet

all one had to do was write poetry,

             good or bad,

                       toss the stuff into the teeming churn

                                and take another drink, of the brunt poison, breathe the

"untrammeled" air,

and set fire to the world.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two

Not a day would pass,

without some vain clawing at posterity [a worry].

Putting the child to sleep,

there is no grandiosity,

             sometimes sweetness,

                     sometimes frustration, a sweaty unwanted nap, ending in darkness, prose.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Three

A rusted chain gleams after

        being dragged sparking down the road.

his poor body, twisted in the night air,

against an abandoned fence post,

gaping wounds dried by the darkness,

                the price of fear of difference in

america.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Four

All the good things that came together in my head,

I forgot.

Chasing them on the page,

I think maybe I should kill myself.

But if the germans couldn't do in the grandparents, why should progress get me?