fact is, there are a few simple truths,
like this one:
dipping feet into a cool stream on a hot summer day is the most pleasant event one can experience in all their life, save for the exhilaration of clawing toes into moist sand while watching an ember sun set over the Pacific.
and speaking of clawing, monsters always have rotting teeth and single mothers and hand-in-hand with that, drunk fathers, and
their claws are so strong that when they cut through a little boy or girl's jugular
it's as if the skin where the cut takes place was pre-perforated;
and did you know that the weight of regret, especially that which comes from wishing something more was said, is about as heavy as two columns of stone from stonehenge, along with
fifteen indian elephants and twenty eight packets of splenda, six paper-clips coated in vinyl and a copy of Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
here's another one: rusty bike pedals of a dark blue mountain bike abandoned and chained to a stop sign in a windy ghetto sometimes spin on their own when cars bust phat beats as they pass by.
a few more ...
we are all wiser than Cheshire cats and practically all the other animals, for that matter.
also, America is free as a bird; specifically, a hungry vulture circling the carcass of a freshly dominated klipspringer.
maroon is actually just dark red.
christians believe in ghosts.
i look cool when i smoke.
i can, at will, make my heart as hard as rhinestone.
and i will never love anyone as much as i love the mist which remains after a shower.
and through this poem i have literally said
everything i have ever wanted to say.
WILL YOU COME AND FETCH ME
what's best for you is sleep, she said,
but i was already running towards her through an open field of tall grasses as if i were intending to take off and fly away,
running towards her wanting her embrace and the smooth touch of her short blonde hair, to feel her fair cheek against mine.
there can be no wanting or desiring desire from us;
there can be no self and therefore no selfishness here,
it can't exist;
there's only a bubbly creek and a few small fish fighting strong currents, dodging
dislodged pebbles;
there's only the cool mountain water and the way in which it joins other traveling
streams to become a sea;
there are only the industrious bees buzzing around violet and magenta wildflowers,
and there is only what i think is best for you and
what you think is best for me.
i don't want to sleep
i just want to sit with you and tell you just how wonderful it is to love you so much
but i was already running towards her through an open field of tall grasses as if i were intending to take off and fly away,
running towards her wanting her embrace and the smooth touch of her short blonde hair, to feel her fair cheek against mine.
there can be no wanting or desiring desire from us;
there can be no self and therefore no selfishness here,
it can't exist;
there's only a bubbly creek and a few small fish fighting strong currents, dodging
dislodged pebbles;
there's only the cool mountain water and the way in which it joins other traveling
streams to become a sea;
there are only the industrious bees buzzing around violet and magenta wildflowers,
and there is only what i think is best for you and
what you think is best for me.
i don't want to sleep
i just want to sit with you and tell you just how wonderful it is to love you so much
SLEEP PERCHANCE TO DREAM
happens best when i have just finished writing a poem;
when my hands and feet are positioned comfortably and somehow
words which are almost always mistakes or lies or nonsense mix
and match and become truth, or at least something like that;
something like an index finger poking the softest part of a heart.
writing a poem most often comes simply, most often after a night with
you under the chandelier of constellations that fills up the night sky,
after walks across an ocean salted sand, the imprints of our feet filling.
for 2 hours and 53 minutes we speak through the darting of eyes and
noticeable sweat of shaky hands; the quick pace to the beat of my heart
like a novel, in and of itself.
to write a poem it's as simple as that, which is why tonight i won't sleep,
i won't write a single line, not one poem;
and definitely
not the most beautiful one.
when my hands and feet are positioned comfortably and somehow
words which are almost always mistakes or lies or nonsense mix
and match and become truth, or at least something like that;
something like an index finger poking the softest part of a heart.
writing a poem most often comes simply, most often after a night with
you under the chandelier of constellations that fills up the night sky,
after walks across an ocean salted sand, the imprints of our feet filling.
for 2 hours and 53 minutes we speak through the darting of eyes and
noticeable sweat of shaky hands; the quick pace to the beat of my heart
like a novel, in and of itself.
to write a poem it's as simple as that, which is why tonight i won't sleep,
i won't write a single line, not one poem;
and definitely
not the most beautiful one.
ANOTHER FOOL
yeah sure the night arrives sooner and in the early evening it's already headlights of passing cars and street lamp's orange glows
but late at night the christmas lights embrace pine trees which decorate front lawns producing an artificial rainbow morning while the children sleep in their beds
outside on the steps of my parents house in slippers wrapped in a blanket with cold toes i make a wreck of my cigarette and exhale the smoke into a chill winter air
this early in the morning and i'm surprised to hear the song of birds whose names i don't know staying warm near the chimney
out in the dark distance there's a tall human figure, scarf blowing in the wind, top hat barely staying on, smoking a pipe
his god dreams of snow days while snuggled in a tiny twin bed
his god wears star wars pajamas
and fears his grandma
and santa claus
his god has already forgotten about him, comforted in the knowledge that if and when it ends there will be always be another winter, a chance for another
when the sun returns, later on, the man in the distance will dissolve apparent and quick
he'll melt under the heat of it all,
he'll become a puddle, become all water, and
i'll be the only witness,
i am the only witness.
but late at night the christmas lights embrace pine trees which decorate front lawns producing an artificial rainbow morning while the children sleep in their beds
outside on the steps of my parents house in slippers wrapped in a blanket with cold toes i make a wreck of my cigarette and exhale the smoke into a chill winter air
this early in the morning and i'm surprised to hear the song of birds whose names i don't know staying warm near the chimney
out in the dark distance there's a tall human figure, scarf blowing in the wind, top hat barely staying on, smoking a pipe
his god dreams of snow days while snuggled in a tiny twin bed
his god wears star wars pajamas
and fears his grandma
and santa claus
his god has already forgotten about him, comforted in the knowledge that if and when it ends there will be always be another winter, a chance for another
when the sun returns, later on, the man in the distance will dissolve apparent and quick
he'll melt under the heat of it all,
he'll become a puddle, become all water, and
i'll be the only witness,
i am the only witness.
UNTITLED (WHAT I'M THANKFUL FOR)
not the pumpkin pie; not the turkey; not the cranberry sauce or the stuffing; not the rice and chicken gravy's thin skin; not the beer or the wine or the margaritas your sister likes so much; not the smell of it all, the smell of grandma's scalloped potatoes or of grandma herself; not the tablecloth; not the special forks and spoons; not the beautiful wine glasses that shine under the expensive chandeliers; not your mother's pretty patterned blouse; not the rings on her fingers, or the way she hums along while cooking; not your dad grumbling stretching out like a fat cat next to a window with sunlight pouring in; not the sounds of doorbells and the beeping of cars as they lock; not doors opening and closing with creaks like the tick of a grandfather clock in the foyer; not the sounds of clothes on clothes during extended and close hugs; not the drive home along the highways of ohio; not the mass of dead trees that lay on the high hills; not the unheard tune sung by somebody in their cars while stuck in traffic; not the shaking of fingers while writing; not the tastes not the scents not the visions; not the feelings, not thanksgiving, not the forgetting of how to say 'father' in korean; not dark nights snuggling, not words or meanings, not sense, not nonsense, not logic; not reason; not science or god, just life life life life.
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
do you think a duck gliding across a pond, moving with the current as if pulled
by an imaginary string, really gives a flying fuck about the economic status of
somali refugees travelling in a midday sun with their burnt and boiled feet
somehow withstanding the heat of some white sand covering a vast desert located
only a few degrees away from the equator?
does a deer, a buck or doe, stop in the middle of chewing the dewy grass of a
meadow to ponder how a black man locked in a jail cell for thirty years will
ever be able to buy a navy blue hyundai sonata and a fifty-inch widescreen
television with which to watch the vikings, or that diamond ring for his lover,
or the college tuition for his beautiful teenage daughter?
or what of a mammoth.
would the last mammoth on earth truly have given a shit about a fifteen year old
transexual filipino kid fiddling with the belt buckle of an american tourist who
was on his paid vacation for sitting in an office and working speculations for
an investment bank, who was still fat from the avocado rissoto salad and the
clam and mussel bordelaise and creme brule?
really, does a wily fox or confident lion, or a squeaky mouse chased by a cat
care at all if a poor mexican boy starves to death next to the lifeless body of
his parents in an abandoned trailer sulking at the side of a bumpy gravel road
left behind by some greasy greedy liars who ran away with their money under the shadow cast by a morning sun across the boundary, across the border?
are there any animals that care, out there?
if so,
might i ask ...
where are you?
by an imaginary string, really gives a flying fuck about the economic status of
somali refugees travelling in a midday sun with their burnt and boiled feet
somehow withstanding the heat of some white sand covering a vast desert located
only a few degrees away from the equator?
does a deer, a buck or doe, stop in the middle of chewing the dewy grass of a
meadow to ponder how a black man locked in a jail cell for thirty years will
ever be able to buy a navy blue hyundai sonata and a fifty-inch widescreen
television with which to watch the vikings, or that diamond ring for his lover,
or the college tuition for his beautiful teenage daughter?
or what of a mammoth.
would the last mammoth on earth truly have given a shit about a fifteen year old
transexual filipino kid fiddling with the belt buckle of an american tourist who
was on his paid vacation for sitting in an office and working speculations for
an investment bank, who was still fat from the avocado rissoto salad and the
clam and mussel bordelaise and creme brule?
really, does a wily fox or confident lion, or a squeaky mouse chased by a cat
care at all if a poor mexican boy starves to death next to the lifeless body of
his parents in an abandoned trailer sulking at the side of a bumpy gravel road
left behind by some greasy greedy liars who ran away with their money under the shadow cast by a morning sun across the boundary, across the border?
are there any animals that care, out there?
if so,
might i ask ...
where are you?
CHRISTMAS IN WASHINGTON
I.
it happens on a thursday while i stand soaked in an afternoon rain underneath a few indelible clouds which deny and reject stray autumn rays too weak to push their way through
and the weight of a passing bus bears itself into a puddle showering dirty water all over and i am waiting patiently for the white outline of a hollow man to signal me across so i can meet her
and even through suffering through the uncomfort of cold wet clothes sticking to warm skin i can still mutter to myself that it's all okay, i'm okay;
i am mostly water, anyway
II.
what i do know:
sharing isn't in our blood.
we weren't born selfless.
no one has to teach us how to take and
want what's not ours;
we weren't made to remember all the
people we meet on the street,
especially the foreign souls we don't
love or know,
for more than sixteen minutes at a time.
and the settlers (make no mistake) they didn't leave for anyone else
but themselves, and maybe the children playing in the vast unpolluted
pasture with their hoops, sunday afternoons after church, blonde locks
overflowing tight white bonnets
they didn't roll forward onward across the new found land passing
families whose wagons were burnt and broken, whose exposed rotting
flesh were made a meal of by ravaging birds for
anyone but themselves:
they just rolled on by, not one look back;
they didn't even flinch
III.
now that you're gone i recognize that this moment and experience can't be translated into just any language (be that the spanish spoken in some particularly green valley of southern andalusia or the ukranian spoken over vodka in a tenement house, or the verse and rhythym of your fluttering eyelashes when you'd sigh in bed)
sharing is not what we do; memories experienced alone shouldn't be shared (they won't mean the same to anyone else), so i want to keep them for myself
hold onto them, just like i hold onto this one:
the image of a tiny shiny aluminum gum wrapper falling out of your patterned purse gone unnoticed to all the passerbys
how it flew away into the wind on a fall evening as an early twilight erased the shadows
how it was like a paper airplane off to some ignored destination,
how you walked away and got on the bus, disappeared into the orange glow of tall street-lamps
how you hummed to yourself, staring off into the distance through the tinted bus window and how you went off
without a sound
to washington
it happens on a thursday while i stand soaked in an afternoon rain underneath a few indelible clouds which deny and reject stray autumn rays too weak to push their way through
and the weight of a passing bus bears itself into a puddle showering dirty water all over and i am waiting patiently for the white outline of a hollow man to signal me across so i can meet her
and even through suffering through the uncomfort of cold wet clothes sticking to warm skin i can still mutter to myself that it's all okay, i'm okay;
i am mostly water, anyway
II.
what i do know:
sharing isn't in our blood.
we weren't born selfless.
no one has to teach us how to take and
want what's not ours;
we weren't made to remember all the
people we meet on the street,
especially the foreign souls we don't
love or know,
for more than sixteen minutes at a time.
and the settlers (make no mistake) they didn't leave for anyone else
but themselves, and maybe the children playing in the vast unpolluted
pasture with their hoops, sunday afternoons after church, blonde locks
overflowing tight white bonnets
they didn't roll forward onward across the new found land passing
families whose wagons were burnt and broken, whose exposed rotting
flesh were made a meal of by ravaging birds for
anyone but themselves:
they just rolled on by, not one look back;
they didn't even flinch
III.
now that you're gone i recognize that this moment and experience can't be translated into just any language (be that the spanish spoken in some particularly green valley of southern andalusia or the ukranian spoken over vodka in a tenement house, or the verse and rhythym of your fluttering eyelashes when you'd sigh in bed)
sharing is not what we do; memories experienced alone shouldn't be shared (they won't mean the same to anyone else), so i want to keep them for myself
hold onto them, just like i hold onto this one:
the image of a tiny shiny aluminum gum wrapper falling out of your patterned purse gone unnoticed to all the passerbys
how it flew away into the wind on a fall evening as an early twilight erased the shadows
how it was like a paper airplane off to some ignored destination,
how you walked away and got on the bus, disappeared into the orange glow of tall street-lamps
how you hummed to yourself, staring off into the distance through the tinted bus window and how you went off
without a sound
to washington
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