First Poetry Anthology

A Brief Aesthetic Philosophy (2009)

ART IS ARTIFICIAL. It is unnatural, for it is the product of a human soul, and not of the meaningless arrangement of atoms in nature. It is an attempt to order the particles of chaos in such a way as to imbue meaning into them.
ART IS CATHARTIC. It is a genuine attempt to communicate the thoughts and emotions of one mind to another. If a piece has no message, whether explicit or intuitive, then it may be a beautiful phenomenon, like a particular arrangement of atoms in nature, but it is not art.
ART IS ARTICULATE. If it fails to establish that link of communication between minds, then it is at best a beautiful and inspiring phenomenon, but it is not art.
ART IS AN ARTICLE OF FAITH. One must believe in the existence of others, and believe that communication is possible, to believe in art. Art is incongruous with a solipsistic or skeptical paradigm.
ART IS HEARTFELT. If the purpose of the piece is something other than artistic communication- i.e. to convince others to do what you want, or to entertain them for recognition and profit- then it is not art, for art is first and foremost a tool of communication.
ART IS THE BARTERING of ideas between two minds, the artist and the audience, who enrich and challenge each other with foreign and novel perspectives.
ART IS PART of a higher level of human development, beyond the self, transcending the limitations of one mind with one perspective.

The Lady Melted (2009)

The men all agreed she was perfect.
Her face was constructed just so;
Her eyes reflected the light splendidly
But did not glow unnaturally.
Her cheeks were smooth and warm
But they never burned sanguine and gory.
And her smile was an affirmation of Lovely God
Who was never threatened by the sneers of rogue apostasy.

But a candle lit her hair
And she melted and ran all over.
The colors were vivid,
Her shrieks sharp and refreshing.
She burned bright like phosphorus
And they couldn't bear to look at her.
The crowd dispersed.
I remained, enraptured.

The Wall is Bare (2009)

The wall was blank.
I beheld it, I held it,
But it withheld its face.

Feeling along the wall
With fingers and memories and guesses,
Still I did not find that window
Through which birds might fly
And pluck my eyes
And carry them to cozy nests
Woven in the shattered belfries
Of antediluvian empires.

Should I have found a mirror;
Then a somber grey threnody
Would bounce from the glass
And douse my ears in formaldehyde.
And my eyelids would shroud me decently
So voyeuristic gravediggers would not peep
Into my naked, lurid soul.
But I never found a mirror.

I stepped back and rubbed my eyes:
Is it a photograph?
Two children on a beach,
Sand tyrants,
A third hidden under the dock,
Untouched by waves,
Immortal
But out of focus...

But then the three children were seven clouds
And I was confused
(As I always am when I blink)
And the printed memory was as insubstantial
As the castles licked and battered by waves.

The only purpose I have observed in this wall:
It returns my inquiries
With omnipresent echoes
As if the wall itself is asking the same question.

On the Mountainside (2009)

I. High

I danced at the summit for eleven weeks.

I felt a million dimensions in every word I spoke, sang, wrote, heard, saw
Texture, timbre, tone
A titillating, tender, ticklish totality
Mastered and dubbed over the Is.

My eyes were ravished by ravishing landscapes
Surrounding me, trapping me in an Edenic, blissful cage;
By somber, majestic portraits of the princes and princesses
Who preside over their cash registers and ticket booths,
Who put a quarter in the box and steal seven newspapers for their friends,
Who try on dresses and skirts they will never buy,
Who pick up after their miniaturized poodles with plastic bags,
Who climb out the window for a covert smoke,
Who forget to take out the trash again,
These bored Gods, these idle avatars of cosmic demonstration,
Sleeping in their walking vessels;
By a principle of frenetic motion;
By an immovable exception;
By a struggle to shove the unshovable;
By feet rooted in will;
By the pout of a violent universe, at last proved impotent;
By the smirk of a man accomplished;
By a rosy lens illuminating the skin
And obfuscating the soul
Of the Is.

But I was oblivious to a stone that Was:
So I stumbled over it
And tumbled down the mountainside.
Rocks tore at my clothes,
Thorns eviscerated and exsanguinated my body,
Bumps and dips in the mountainside
Bludgeoned and battered me,
Breaking all my bones,
Dirt and bugs got in all the bloody bodily breaches,
Infected, infested, ingested me,
And when at last I lay dormant at the foot of the mountain,
I was a mangled sack of rubble and filth.

II. Low

I decayed in the soil for eleven weeks.

Worms ate my flesh
(And weasels ripped it),
Poisoning me with their sick gluttony.
My shattered bones were chilled and frosted
By a wind that filled my ears and nostrils,
Stung my eyes,
Blackened my toes,
Echoed screaming in my head a cacophony of:
Hate.
With my bony claws
I wanted to pluck out the eyes
That watered with pity.
I wanted to strangle the necks
Wherefrom comforting words would come,
Desperately try to console me.
I wanted to bite the hands
That stroked, that soothed, that offered succor.
I wanted to snap the arms
That wrapt around me, that attempted to lift me out of my mire.

And a rain fell, and drenched my would-be rescuers,
And they retreated into warm houses farther up the side of the mountain.
I summoned that rain.
I drove them away.
It was:
Misery.
It made everything wet and cold and weak.
It cast its shadow on everything;
There were no colors, no shades, no glow.
It clacked and beat against the ground,
Drowned out the song of the sunny day,
Silenced birds, silenced men, silenced women,
Silenced even children
Who are not silenced by death.
It was all the energy-
All being was in the falling of those billions and trillions of drops
All else was inert, sucked dry of kinetic potential.
It was a heavy blanket
Of wallowing, of despair, of melodrama,
Muffling, dulling, asphyxiating the Is.

Then a bolt of lightning left the clouds and struck me.
My bones glowed electron blue,
The ice melted and exploded,
The worms were fried (and weasels, too),
Their corpses returned me my blood and flesh,
And I ran up the mountain as the clouds parted and the sun shone
And the rainbow was just a little corny.

III. Epilogue

It does not always last for eleven weeks.

But it always lasts long enough to feel like a lifetime
And it never lasts forever.
Eternally commuting between the peak of Mania
And the pit of Despair,
My life is lived most on the Mountainside,
The mean average of violent mood swings.
I live a dithyramb to bipolarity.

Dragonflies (2007)

A red-brick monster saw me yesterday
As I was floating 'twixt some derelict bones
Of steel leviathans that could not say
Why they were sentenced thus to die alone.
It knew my misery by my tortured mien,
Observed my haggard face, drawn sore and long,
And queried, "Sir, you look as if you've seen
A ghost in your own mirror," -not far wrong!
"Astute goliath, how grew thou so wise,"
I asked, "to know the living from the dead?"
The beast replied, "I felt a west-wind rise;
It carried you before goliath said."
I wondered at this strange thing he had spoke,
When, blown again, I drifted then like smoke.

But shaken for a moment to inquire,
I felt my feet grow heavier than lead.
I dragged myself against the cold respire
And crawled inside the brute's cavernous head.
Persistent in my quest to know its mood,
I then addressed my kindly shelter-thing;
"What is this place of grey decrepitude,
With crumbling phantoms such as yourself being?"
He said, "This was a place; now it is not.
I once was called a home, but now no longer.
My people left their legacies to rot."
At this, my curiosity grew stronger.
"Then, Homestead, tell me more of your sad tale,
While loneliness escapes us in this gale."

That building cleared the throat it didn't have,
Reflected for a moment, and began:
"Not long ago..." (a rumbling voice of gravel
Shook me as he spoke) "There was a man
Who sat before his writing desk, and looked
Out yonder window-" there 'twas by the door-
"He saw a sunny day he had forsook,
Then saw a thing he'd never seen before:
She laughed at leaves, and sang to soothe the sun,
She snatched a dragonfly from out the air.
They shined alike; the other resembled the one,
The sapphire tail and eyes, gold wings and hair.
She held it up to gift it with her kiss;
But it took wing, and left the girl amiss.

"Shrugged she, the maiden, then went on her way,
The man, still quite bewitched, could only stare:
He couldn't shrug away that nymphly fay-
No man can shrug the sight of beauty bare!
Sat he in quiet repose for all the morrow,
Watched he for five whole minutes, the girl pass by;
Anonymous, his love seemed much like sorrow,
And with each smile, he let out a sigh.
A week or two he spent in contemplation
Upon the maiden's every lovely feature,"
-My hackles rose in some vague irritation-
"Until he set himself to greet the creature.
Out swung the window, out stuck Lovestruck's head,
While watching for the girl who flushed him red.

"From twixt the trees his fantasy thus sprang
Today, adorned in feathers- some young fancy
She twirled about, beheld the sky, and sang,
Her pretty trill then quailed him- he grew antsy.
Checking his trepidation, he spoke thus:
'You know me not, but I love you, sweet angel!
For weeks I've watched you; now I feel I must
Win your approval- leave me not to dangle!'
The maiden laughed- but so delightfully
For by this tender plea, she was quite touched,
'My dear,' she sang, 'you've earned quite rightfully
My admiration- if not my love, as such.
Perhaps we'll meet again.' At that, away
She went to tell the birds of her strange day."

Before the house went on, I interjected,
"I liketh not the tone of your ballád;
For something grows within me quite dejected
I mourn for something else that I once had."
"This is the tale," the floor said with a frown,
"Of how a thing is lost forevermore.
That is the story of this old ghost town:
A sad thing after longs for days before."
"Alright," I said, "the tale is universal.
By chance I recognized it in my heart.
Tell me, will this young lad see a reversal
Of his poor fortunes?" "No," he said, "the start
Of his own ruin is now set in motion.
But can this curse be lifted with devotion?

"So this young fellow swooned there for awhile,
So stupefied he could not think nor speak
He bolted up then like a projectile,
And stumbled into bed for nigh a week.
Not sorrowful nor angry was he, though,
Nay, he was still excited by the thought
Of his liason with his beloved doe,
By whom he'd been into a fever wrought.
'She smiled! She laughed!' He cried aloud with glee.
'She noticed me!' The fancy then had changed.
No longer was his love a fantasy-
But true hope brewed, romantically deranged.
The spark had struck the tinder, thus was lit
A gentle candle? Nay, a mad fire-pit!

"The man sat at his writing desk once more
Took up his pen, and eagerly wrote of
That nameless beauty; letters by the score
(Though never mailed, of course) witnessed his love.
And when she'd pass by, he'd shout 'hi' and wave-
Her woodland friends would often scatter, scared-
At his desk-window, there he stood- so brave!
While from this house his love he oft declared."
I fancied, then, I heard the wood-beams chuckle;
I almost felt the house was mocking me.
I knew not why I thought so, thus I stifled
The suspicion and said deliberately,
"So coward was he, that much is quite plain.
Tell me more of his romance set in vain."

"The maiden grew more genial day by day
Despite herself, she reveled in his praise
And longer would she tarry from her way
To salve the charming sycophant's malaise.
As weeks grew fortnights, still they daily met
And every moonlit hour, he was dreaming
Of her; and every day until sunset
His eyes glazed, as he spied her phantom seeming.
The two grew closer; strangely they drew near-
The madman's dreams were almost manifest!
The only barrier was his awkward fear
Of this comfortably-kept prison to divest.
Would his passion e'er outweigh his cowardice?
Oh courage, grant this good man his due bliss!

"One day, a blackened sky saw him and her
In conversation; rain began to fall.
The girl, quite quickly drenched, begged to enter
He, happy to oblige, relieved her pall.
The hearth was warm; most jolly were those two
They laughed and chatted by the fireside.
For pleasant company relieves ague
More surely than a host of pharmicides
And he and she were in a perfect bliss
She sat quite close (intentions closer lay!)
But just as she leaned in to plant a kiss,
Up bolted that damned fool, who backed away.
'The rain's let up; you now can safe go home.'
'My dear, I'd rather not go out alone.'"

I quivered, seething, loathing that buffoon
For now I knew why I'd flown by this home.
I knew why I wore such a face of gloom,
Remembering what force set me to roam.
"I hesitated then," said I in dread,
"The very thought of setting out the door
Brought terror to my heart; and riveted,
I stood there, firmly fixed into the floor.
I could have left with her that day!" I cried,
"I could've escaped this mediocrity!
The world offered a life- I chose to die,
I spurned the heavens' generosity..."
I fell to weeping in that sad old house.
"Behold my wretched state: a timid mouse!

"And here I am- my dragonfly has flown!
I've wandered, dead, through graveyards bleak as me.
By flagstone corpses, charnel winds have blown
My empty soul full circle back to thee.
And now, inspired by the same remorse,
What am I driven to enjoy in life?
My happiness has fully run its course
There's nothing left for me but pain and strife."
"Just so," the window whispered, "one by one
The men who built this village met despair.
For when their hopes and fancies had all gone,
Then nothing held them fast; they took to air.
And as they wallow in their petty pity,
This waste is what remains of their great city."

So struck was I by such a poignant story
And puzzled at the grim frivolity
I looked about my walled memento mori
And saw an unfamiliar quality;
I could not put my finger on its nature
But something had upset the ambiance
My feeling had no definite nomenclature
But cut short was my bitter nonchalance
It seemed a glow had filtered through the air
A golden light was dancing on the walls;
Turned to the window, I could only stare
As a dazzling dragonfly softly set fall.
The light cast through its angel wings shone bright;
The burning jewel before me was quite a sight!

It droned as it set wing into the room
And circling 'bout my head, lit on my shoulder.
Six gentle legs then cast away my gloom
And, dragon by my side, I grew much bolder.
I slowly marched before the ruined door
Breathed deeply, and plunged headlong into life
My spirits and the dragonfly set soar
And cut the bitter winds just like a knife.
Brighter than I remembered was the sun
And greener I'd not thought the grass to be
I soon desired to sing, to dance, to run
And nature sang and danced and ran with me.
But suddenly, a haunting song I heard
More precious than the chirping of a bird.

I whirled about to face her; there she stood!
Her azure eyes poured honey in my soul.
We stood transfixed beside the lush, green wood.
I begged, "Forgive me for that evil hole
In which I hid- from life, from love, from you!"
We locked each other in a fierce embrace
For deep inside, my dear and I, we knew
Our hearts could finally give up their chase.
And when she drew me in to taste her lips,
A thousand fanfare trumpets blared their cheer
The like that launch a newly-finished ship
Onto its maiden voyage- we to steer.
A crash brought us to look back to my friend:
The red-brick monster had finally met its end.

Body (2010)

In the purring murmur of an roaring hairdryer
Breathe sensual whispers no one else hears
From a lovely, a nymphly, a sexy angel-
Through the bathroom mirror she winks and leers.

In a throaty coo that dips and peaks,
My angel, my damsel, my lover, Me, speaks:

“To be me, a free me,
What ecstasy sweet!
A she me
Needs no 'we'
To feel complete.”

So sing thee, so dream thee;
Why weep thee? Why scream thee?
What keeps thee, what brings thee
To shivering knees?
Seize the means to epiphany,
Wait not for meager destiny.

Strip clean
And dig deep,
Breathe, then shriek and boldly leap;
Weed away the weakness
Of meekness,
Antiqueness-
Keep ye your birthright: dreary bleakness?
Nay! Seek ye genuine uniqueness!
And sweat...
And bleed...
And wheeze...
And find!
Deify,
Me-ify
Body sublime!
Oh, glisten, gleam,
You streaming, teeming
Spring of magic, dazzling being!
Fling your beam
'Cross sky and sea and
Pierce the sheathes
Of paltry seeming!

And then, see
Just how heavenly
Could being be
If seeming things
Like 'he' and 'she'
Were history-
Bad dreams,
Old themes,
Extincted memes;

And all that we
Could feel and see
Was Me and Thee... and guileless Glee!

Fight (2010)

I'm itching for a rumble
slander, spit, a dirty smirk
I'll feed your teeth to my hog
(I don't have a hog)

Martha (2010)

Found a cracked picture frame at a resale shop
On the back is scribbled,
"Martha-1979"

Lunch (2010)

He opens his lunchbox-
a tin of tuna, some broccoli
I'm eating tapioca pudding

Phonecalls (2010)

she's calling all our friends
to let them know
i'm the Bad Guy

Book Report (2010)

Pick up a crumpled piece of paper off the sidewalk
it's a book report on Tom Sawyer
A+

Run (2010)

I open the gate
the hoodlum can't run fast enough
My dog eats him

I (2010)

I
I I I I
I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I
/i/ won't be defeated by autocorrect!

this poem is untitled (2010)

no its not

Flavorless (2010)

The prime minister's face turns blue.
There are 400cc's of revolution in the soup.

Budget (2010)

Don't leave the fork in the bowl;
we can't afford a new microwave.

Miracle (2010)

The statue of the Virgin Mary
is crying tears of blood.
The priest has tended this temple
for thirty-three years.
He is crying tears of salt.

Experiment in Internal Rhyme and Stumbling Rhythm (2010)

Lonely, stoned
a silent phone
thick makeup, grabbed her coat, and left for a
Rough night clubbing
Rubbed against a sick fuck
Tough luck;
Duped and now she's doped
Bound up in nylon rope
Cigar smoke bites her eyes, she's crying
Spiders in her veins
She flickers in and out of trying, lying
Gasping, sighing
Dead, undying
Grasping cast-iron bed frame, breaks her nails
She screams into a sock
Electrodes on her nipples
Nasty shock
Her windpipe's blocked
And she is slipping, slipping, slipping

Rainbow Vomit #1 (2010)

Loliput Loliput gave it away
Loliput only put three on the tray
Loliput Loliput Loliput lay where
Loliput's brains laid a stain on the day

Rainbow Vomit #2 (2010)

Jingodash fed him a raw crocodile; Old
Jingodash Gogol was awfully guileful!
Think o'that Jingodash smacking up radish n'
Jingodash Gogol, he always was smileful.

Rainbow Vomit #3 (2010)

Bruble never says katchoo 'cause
Bruble hasn't got the blues, for
Wouldn't you concede it's true that
Bruble's two bulls shine agew?

Rainbow Vomit #4 (2010)

Havenibashi der sorbelgliwachter dest
Gleiben ich schleipen tu maquanabocht!
Mokole,
Mokole,
Milikone-
Pokeke-
Teche na filo gon pigew na brok.

For Evan (2010)

It is the ghost of a dead artist that paints in blood. The blood stirs and swirls on the floor, it drips up and down the walls, it haunts the ceiling and tints the bulbs. It paints a glade, an exploding star, a portrait of Che Guevarra, a den of bears, a swarm of spiders, an erotic scene of nude Romans, a still life of bowls of luscious fruit mixed in with rotten fruit, a medieval battle, the Virgin Mary, Marilyn Monroe, a guitar leaning against the wall, a crying Indian: the artist is desperately trying to communicate something, something unresolved, his anchor to a world that is no longer his. But the mind untethered to a brain is a weak and withering thing, and when he reaches for an image to paint a concept, he grabs the one right next to it. His work is beautiful, more beautiful than it ever was in life, but it makes no sense, and he is frustrated, more frustrated than he ever was in life. So he paints more frantically, more urgently, more voluminously. He paints the whole loft, every surface, then moves out the windows and doors, paints the bricks, the tin roof, the sidewalk; it spreads down the block, and soon the whole neighborhood is covering in swirling, dancing images. Everything is a rich, un-coagulated red, and wet and sticky to the touch. His masterpieces are never still, they coalesce tentatively for mere seconds before decomposing and recomposing in new ways. He is completely unintelligible now. The walls of his unconscious have decayed and crumbled, and his memories and imagination and old mortal desires tumble out over everything. The blood bursts and runs from the old skins of the neighbors. Now hundreds have been thoroughly exsanguinated to feed his thirsty brush. Police rush in. SWAT. National Guard. FEMA. It is a crisis. As the spirit squeezes the blood out of them like paint from tubes, the painting grows. Soon, the city is the largest work of art in human history. It is also the greatest natural catastrophe in the nation's history. They call it a natural catastrophe because they do not understand it. If they did, they would still not call it man-made, because the artist is no longer any kind of man.

Too Many Garage Poets (2010)

It's essentially empty.
But let's put a nice box around it.
Here's a metaphor thick with roses roses roses.
Here's repetition to mean more than it means and as much as it says.
Here's a witticism that you'll remember.
There goes the fourth wall.
It's all very easy to make.
The rhythm just takes a little more work.
Rhyme too much, and you've written a song.
That's the difference these days.
They're going to invent a drum machine for poetry,
And then kids will be able to produce their own at home.
Garage poets.
Coin a phrase and make it the name of your poem just so you're sure you'll be famous.
Marketing is the tough part.
There's a surplus of goods.
There's a deficit of distributors.
It's a limiting factor.
Think about it.
Or abandon reason if you don't care about other people.
The poets are done until the publicists pick up the slack on their end.
Want to write stuff no one will ever read?
Become a poet.
Want to advance the craft of poetry?
Sales.

Congealing (2010)

"I COULD PUNCH A HOLE THROUGH A WALL if i could punch a hole through a wall

i feel like an animal trapped in my eyes

no; it's like a cage trapped by the animals
its inanimacy is threatened by their relentless exuberance."
-notes I typed while losing my mind to two cups of Guatemalan coffee

It's so relentlessly white but try as you might you can't
Paint this canvas with knickknacks and homey effects.
The bare pale surfaces reflect frustration until the little room is like a
Psychic oven
And the stillness goes off like firecrackers
But all the phantom noises
And frenetic images
Don't have the courtesy to ring your eardrums or
Spear your eyes
And you know that it's all a private display.
You've hardly seen anyone for a week
And sometimes it feels like the whole world is
A private display.
Wood grains and coffee stains scream for attention,
Pubic hairs stuck in the paint on the bathroom walls,
The varying textures of three towels,
Hands sliding on wet tile,
Teeth like the jagged edges of broken bones
Running hard against your damp fingers,
Sweatless slickness of skin and
Twitching fingers and
Legs Dancing in the Air
All twisted up in a Body Maze
Dazed by motion, stupefied by stillness,
Vibrating world in the mind
Reflecting a WHITE world so relentlessly STILL
Tasting sterile and blemished;
A meatless meat.
I'm crawling naked into the shower
Awkwardly yogic
The warm soft constant tearing my thoughts apart
Into collage bits on a white white--
I'm becoming a curtain
A water hair curtain
Flirting with vertical streams
Manipulating the bizarre architecture of Falling Water
Twisting this wet world into
Sensations that bleed between sensations
So I don't know what's seeing and
What's feeling and
What's tasting and
It all collapses in the white cold vessel.
Shuddering miles beneath the faucet
Trying frantically to concentrate, I keep
Pumping hard to squeeze something out
Turning pink and aching all over in a wounded effort to
Perform something familiar and pathetic and human
But all the energies are scattered in the tiles and the
Towels and the
Hairs and in
Half-a-dozen different thoughts per second and
My essence is scattered on every surface of this blank slick world
And I can't reach in and pull up such a strong feeling
And my arms collapse sore and useless as I
Sink like a body deeper in my white casket
And the hot plumbing tubes keep raining on
Gleefully
Like the oblivious laugh that--
Every object is an oblivious laugh that--
Every anthropomorphized object is an anonymous biting remark
Resembling some human feature but
Painless and relentless and
Unflinchingly stiff,
Cradling the flaccid puddle of water of my spent but unserved self.


All those energies that pulled together the universe have dispersed.
The falling apart is less of a Big Bang and more of a whimper.
The wet thing on the ground feels much like an unswimming fish
That flopped out of its habitat
With barely the presence of mind to twist off the faucet.
Rising up like a thousand evolving generations of ancestors,
It (this is you or me) clambers up the steep-feeling slope across the living room to the--
Well, there's only one room, isn't there?
To the other part of the living and dying room.
The last hiccups of energy pop out in violent spurts--
This body rushes to the couch, up the bed, opens-closes the window,
Breaks bread and fast curled up on a place mat of six tiles.
White bread.
White butter.
White tiles.
All the confused wonder and alarm has turned sour and
All the tongue tastes is a bitter rage.
The bad currency is unspendable
And it keeps inflating and taxing you sitting
In a vault in your stomach.
Every memory and
Every sensation is
Fermenting like a bad draught
And the humming pounding quietude is not a pleasant buzz.
The fuzz has left,
The haze erased,
With haste the corners all re-pasted--
But the episode is wasted.
So much is missing.
Questions without answers like
Wounds without scabs.
The subjective is defined by struggle but
Objects feel no pain.
Objects feel no pain...


Drooling dripping cool the dark fissure under the sofa
Black grandness oozing out and gross essence oozing in.
All painful things are cast into the abstract abyss.
This body surrenders to a familial bond.
Atom calls to atom
Being is being
Mass and extension define the object
And the self defines itself out of being.
Thoughts ooze out into the crevasse
Leaving a vast interior cavity.
The room is inside the cavity.
The cage is inside the animal.


They Trace Winston Churchill in the Sand (2011)

Editor's Note: The Euio teach the counting numbers to their children with the creation myth of Gamshi, the External. They learn to relate the five even numbers to the five senses, in the order they acquire them, over the course of their five years of infancy: 2-Touch, 4-Taste, 6-Smell, 8-Sound, 0-Sight. They then append the five odd numbers before the even numbers according to their five-fold causal ontology: 1-Cloth, 3-Grain, 5-Clouds, 7-Slugs, 9-Mirrors. It is curious that they relate the causes to the things they sense, as ostensibly they have never directly sensed the "true" attributes of the causes: even if what they imagine the "cloth" to look like is exactly how it appears, or even if they correctly guess the true texture of the "slugs", it is only a coincidence. The Euio literally cannot understand their own creation myth, though they can hold thoughts in their heads that resemble "understanding".

1 First Gamshi garbed them in shifting cloth which stroked and scraped and chilled them and held them fast;
2 This was touch
3 Then Gamshi slipped grains of flavor in their mouths that tumbled around as bitterness, sourness, sweetness, savor,
4 And this was taste
5 Then Gamshi stuffed clouds in their noses that would sometimes entice and sometimes offend, and sometimes they cried
6 When they smelled musty old memories
7 Gamshi opened a jar and out poured slugs that wriggled inside their ears, that would now and then vibrate low or high
8 And this they heard
9 Last Gamshi created a dazzling maze of mirrors and lit a match
0 And all the beautiful things they saw were the manipulated reflections of that single match

These were the five causes of the five effects, and altogether they were the ten things that happened outside the self.

What Festered, Sublimated (2011)

The fire started in the basement.
It grew like fungus in the dark.
The smoke choked out the roaches,
And they skittered up from little crevices
And slept in walls and cabinets.
Well-placed poison bombs curbed
The ugly bugly nuisance.

The fire ate a lot of air.
Pipes and cracks became furious bellows.
Heavy smoke kept wafting out
Between floorboards, under the door,
Piling soot everywhere,
Blanketing a white house black.

The fire began to pull down the house.
Sweaty paint wept down the walls,
Wood warped and beams buckled,
Bricks cracked and windows shattered.
The whole house baked and quaked.
The dog died howling,
Curled up in the oven.

The fire erupted to a warm welcome.
The weary residents were gathered
In the living room, calm, waiting,
Covered in soot and dead bugs,
Scabbed and red and roasted,
Long-suffering, terrorized,
Confused, but calmly awaiting
The climax of their plagues.

The fire erupted with a wretched crack.
It tore through the walls, the floors,
The people, scouring bones,
Emptying closets and throwing
Pieces of rooms and lives everywhere.
It swallowed up a great deal of fresh air.
It multiplied and magnified and
Ate the neighbors in a hoarse gulp.

The fire made the local news.
Red trucks zoomed in to the rescue
Futile, pouring water on the blaze
That boiled and sizzled and
Seared the skin off the firemen.
Paramedics couldn't approach their bodies.
They parked and stared and cried.

The fire was growing below, too.
It hit the gas line going to the stove,
And traveled from house to house,
Bursting into kitchens,
Lighting up dozens, hundreds of houses
That glowed like candles
On a cake you could see from a satellite.

The fire made the earth shine like a star.
It had spread all over the continent,
It had turned oil spills into floating infernos,
Hurricanes carried terrible red siroccos
Wild and free across the planet,
They tried to put it out,
Threw oil and booze on it, blew on it,
Then threw themselves into the drunken fire.

The fire made the earth shine like a star.
It shined for centuries,
Burning up everything for fuel
Then burning itself like the sun.
The moon was drawn in
To the irresistible medley of fusion.

The fire consumed the moon.
The moon bloomed like a flower
Millions of years in the making.

untied (2011)

nestle up in an angle in a place
like brushed into a painting
impressions of shades
in red floor,
in blue curtains,
yellow sheets green skin
frozen being
dripping pitcher still
cat watching from ledge
sunlight purple sheen
makes a purple stain
satin stain
(istan, sitan, nasti,)
soften skin
purple green skin
living in
brushstrokes
local silence
framed in fame
infame
inflamed in rigid rainbow
blowing on hot soup
never poops
never cools
hot soup everblowing
neverknowing
showingstill ness
framed freezed
painted into the walls
the couch
everything brushed into
everything brushed of too
latent waking cchake
shaken place
unshaken place
held cautious
growin stiff
flowstiff
crystalline is themselves
the scene
crystalline is rigid meaning
brushed into background
found here place
contra thereplace
table on clumsy legs
cat watching fluffy watching
purple stains
blue floor
yellow curtains
red sheets
yellow floor
red curtains
blue sheets
red floor
blue curtains
yellow sheets
green seeing, --being appertaining
holding catting from a
standing waiting
green being
brushed into
cat curtains
yellow placeage
nascent stasis
hanging today
in a new way
brushed into a
pastel ponder
bedsit cooling everhot
livid soupshiveringquiveringwhithering
blowblow open wind
over the
pitcher drips cauotoh
perched upon a
clumsy legel
aboutaboutaboutthe
samesquare crystalliquid
beingsquare thisplace
painted herein hanging
languid stiff
hold, hold
hereinis lucid keep lucid lucid
closedeyes contemplating in
twodi--mensions
waiting for the passage of time.


grace and wildness (2011): Apollonian and Dionysian are overused. Nietzsche was a poet more than a philosopher, and these were beautiful words that sang to him that he earnestly wanted to share. But when they become Terminology they lose their song. Here are two other words: grace and wildness. They are not capitalized because they are not absolute, mutually exclusive, all-encompassing Categories. They are two qualities found in some things, in some cases in the same thing at different times, and at some times in the same thing all at once. They are like two lovers that sometimes play off of each other, sometimes complement each other, sometimes merge in complete accord, and sometimes bicker violently, but they are deeply and utterly connected even as they are as wholly distinct as night and day.
grace: there is holy grace for the lovers of a god or goddess, but there is a private, secular grace in the delicate hands of a prince or princess. Grace is a pristine, fluid order, sheer and crystalline but not brittle. Grace the song wraps back into the beginning playing itself, grace the perfectly documented, perfectly executed experiment establishing perfect certainty of perfect truth, grace the epithet of the dancer and the pianist and the mother and the well-oiled machine. A pyramid in a sphere in a cube in a dodecahedron. Falling from the clouds into a pair of slippers.
wildness: nothing merely destructive or dismal like chaos or discord or anarchy, not base and savage, but sublimely inscrutable. The wildness of love and nature and pathos and drenched dreams and muddy inebriation, that is the surrender to the whims of every possible future. Wild the windy whirl of leaves, melodic gibberish of the baby, dogs barking at walls. Voluntary blindness, bargaining with invisible currents, wild wild wild tirades passionate about their own passion, directed in every direction, testing the patience of heaven and earth. Worms ravishing peaches, peaches swallowing worms.
grace: palindrome, poem that is all one moment, the nine-minute song you know so well you hear the end in the opening chords and sixteen verses pass in a long instant. Rousseau said music is not like a painting because a painting happens all-at-once while a song happens in-time. He decried harmony because it is an attempt to layer sounds and create music-in-a-moment. He praised melody as an evolution in time. Here, then, let harmony be gracious. The classical painting is graceful because it is perfectly synchronized, chromatized in all its parts, one whole indelible mark on the mind. Harmony, then, is the attempt to bring grace into song, unity, cooperation between instruments, notes' compassion for notes. The first movement and the final movement, the recurring theme, the key and the transformations of the key and the Grand Plan tying the subtle mutations of key, the fifth and the third in an immaculate threesome with the root and the seventh ringing as we wait with bated breath to fall back into ecstatic climax with the root; there is a sexual quality in grace, a coupling, a pairing, not wild but harmonious and unified.
wildness: melody, then, be wildness. Melody changing mood in time, expression, cavorting, exploring, sincerest journey continuous, linked not in the harmony of the parts but in a traceable history of change. If Rousseau finds harmony naturally in painting and a gross introduction to music, then likewise Melody, province of ancient song, finds its way into painting in the works of Kandinsky, de Kooning, flowing journeys of color crisscrossing in a canvas, a perpetually changing experience, seeing-in-time, multiplying the moment of instant apprehension into a million moments of astounded discovery, born again squealing in delight every time. An artist seized in a dream covers a canvas with oil to make it blank, to make an open dance floor for the eye, and with an audience of searching patrons the painting becomes a noisy ballroom. And the dancers find accord in the sense of the dance, if not the sensations, and the piece is hung on a wall, like holding hands singing many songs instead of Kumbayah. Here then as harmony found sex in grace, so melody finds compassion (or parallel passion) in wildness.

Spinning with Vague Nostalgia (2011)

I don't remember very well
The merry-go-round I used to love.
I know it stood at Northwest Mall;
I know it had a lot of lights.
I've got a picture in my mind,
But how should I know if it's real? We

Went to Chick-fil-A and ate those
Golden sandwiches with waffle
Fries and soda but we never
Went to Cinnabon or slurped on
Ice cream cones but rarely; Dad was
Loathe to splurge on sweets, and so in-
Stead we went to ride the merry-go-
Round-and-round I hardly could get
Up the horse's back my dad would
Pick me up like so many peaches,
Plop me on the plastic saddle,
Mount his own fantastic steed, and
Then the music played and then the
Carousel would grind and whir and
Up and down and round we'd go;
Stately, graceful, swooping slow, a-
Bout the carousel we'd go, as
Mirrors placed around us showed our
Smiling faces flash among the
Ponies and the griffons and the
Stallions and the dragons and the
Merry-go-round would slow to a halt as the
Music petered out and I would
Want to ride again and sometimes
Dad and I would ride around a
Thousand times or so it felt-- I
Loved the carousel I loved the
Mall I loved to go to Chick-fil-A I
Loved adventures I loved life I
Loved my dad.

My attention is turned south. (2011)

I. What Was and What Remains

There's so much dust in my old room
My eyes get all red and swollen
And I sneeze all the time
When I'm in Houston.

I've still got a working VCR by my bed,
I can watch Reservoir Dogs and Taxi Driver,
I can even watch recordings of Garfield and Poirot
My parents taped before I could reach the controls.

My old friends are still my best friends.
My heart never left Houston,
But my brain's growing and my body's honing
And I'm sucking up nutrients in Chicago.

My old friends are still my best friends,
But even when my guts fall back in the good old groove,
My mind struggles to keep up.
I'm out of the habit of closing gaps and spilling warm words.

We sold my car before I left,
The car I loved like a silent sister,
The car I slept in and ate in,
The car I never broke in,
Where I swallowed so much fear and pain,
The dog that followed me everywhere,
The smelly locker, the saferoom;
I had to clean it out and it felt
Like pumping formaldehyde
In my first child.

I left in a hurry
Like a rocket clawing out of the atmosphere
Like a child crawling out of warm water.
Falling back is as easy as
Jumping off a plank.

II. So Untrue

The food was always what I wanted.
The roads were longer
but the ride was shorter.
I had so many places,
Everything was cheap and friendly.
Going out meant something.

The sticky warm air embraced me,
Houston pressed my head against her heart
And we rocked in silence.
You don't need love in warm weather.
You don't need love in a place where everything loves you.

Hunger bit better there,
Exhaustion weighed pleasantly there,
The pain was softer there,
Either my skin was thicker
Or everyone pulled their punches.

III. And

My heart is safe in Houston.
Needle in a
Duck in a
Bunny in a
Box under
the Woods.

I keep the best things far away
So I can love them scarcely and feverishly
And I never abuse them anymore.

Mugged by an Angel (2011)

That perfume is a heady memory.
Whenever I'm embraced by that wild ghost,
I'm paralyzed in wistful reverie.

It seized me in the Modern gallery;
Like a dog I chased invisible trails by nose,
Sucked up the perfume's heady memory.

It swept by once, when I worked groceries;
Stunned and sick I tottered at my post,
My spirit paralyzed in reverie.

There are no bounds to perfume's savagery;
That luscious panther, fierce and bellicose,
Would eat my heart with heady memories.

It parries jaded, scornful mummery,
And deftly gores my guts with its riposte;
I, bleeding, sink in wistful reverie.

When that old scent exhumes a younger me,
The fool fills up his helpless, loveless host.
Her perfume triggers heady memories,
and paralyzing, wistful reveries.

The or then (response to Wallace Stevens' "Of Mere Being") (2011)

The palm is not the end of feeling.
The song shines beyond Reason.
The thought moves us in a foreign meaning.

A mind-fangled human,
the bird without unhappy feathers,
stands with an open palm.

A bronze-feathered fire rises in its palm,
sings of gold wind in space at last,
Sings slowly of that happy decor.

You know it branches then
at the bird-human edge:
being merely dangles without making.