Love’s Divorce

If you were a worm

I’d give you the plow

I would forgive you

If I knew how

.

My hands are sweaty

From a loving disease 

I’m writing you letters

That you’ll never read

.

I clutch in my hand

This arrow of spite

I’ll rip through your heart

With vengeful delight

.

Blood tastes bitter

When spilled for love

I am the snake

And you are the dove

.

I hunt in the hollow

Your scent makes me ill

I need your confession

Before I can kill

.

With fervor, I follow

Your sweet siren sound

As you pluck out my soul

Like a rose from the ground

.

The snake will starve

Cut off from the source

The dove will wither

From love’s divorce

.
Snow falls upon seeds

Come spring they’ll start

A sweet flower blooms

From a wound in the heart

Talkin’ Lazy Sunday Orwellian Blues

I heard there were riots in France over expensive petrol

Meanwhile in America, old dinosaurs still got soul

Frack those titties, twerk that cigarette, dab that motor oil

Gas is cheap, what a sign of relief!

We’re on a MOTHER-FUCKING winning streak

(Cowardly lions eating the meek)

dreamers, cast your wishes

And let’s treat the world as our sink

Leave it full’a dirty dishes!

Hakuna Matata, you peasants & bitches!

Here, in the Center of the Universe,

Old-timers be talkin’ fear, uncertainty, retraction

Young folk talkin’ apathy, depression, distraction

World leaders spittin’ discord, division, abstraction

While some no-good, low-down transient heathen bums

Still believin’ that bangin’ that old revolution drum

Is gonna make change come, (like Don on Stormy’s face)

Talkin’ wrenches, talkin’ sparks,

Talkin’ starve the mule, tame the ox in the dark,

Eat the elephant with a silver spoon

Talkin’ some day soon, we’ll get ‘em soon

Talkin’ light, talkin’ passion, talkin’ silent disco passes

Talkin’ awakening, talkin’ social justice, talkin’ action

Dear God, please don’t bother me with tomorrow

It’s Sunday.

We ain’t got time for all this worldly sorrow.

I work all week

There’s football

And beer

And shopping malls

8-balls and cue balls

Nacho cheese fountains

Spray tan booties and shaved balls

And dorito cheetoh frito chex-mix mountains,

I wanna climb ‘em all

Let’s drive

Let’s burn

Feast, feast, and feast

‘til we eat ourselves alive

The whole buffet, even the doctors ‘n priests

Wondering,

What is it for?

What else could I be here for?

Why, on God’s green earth

Is all this money waiting in the dirt?

In America, even if you’re poor

You’re still rich,

richer than most of the world

So give thanks, you son of a bitch

‘Cus Uncle Sam needs help diggin’ this ditch.

Mock & Awe (Or Instant Gratifuckation For a Facebook Generation)

(Rough cut)

.

If misery loves company

Suffering deserves a parade

Can you believe your life isn’t butter?

Mine’s fuckin’ marmalade

.

Got food, got water, got clothes, got ends

Got words, got time, bad jokes, good friends

Holdin’ our hats straight into the winds-

We’re sellin’ fame to the nameless and faith to the faceless

.

Cus blood is raceless like

New-Agers are baseless

Run my tongue through empty places

In teeth, pockets, ear-holes, & faces

.

Want true religion? Buy my book, forget thyself!

You’re sick, you’re battered, you need my help!

Trust no words & pursue true wealth

Keep reading more for a ladder into Hell

.

People won’t like you forever

And Deepak Chopra can’t make you better

Positive thoughts will change with the weather

Hang tough, remember: pain beget pleasure

.

Follow the threads, unravel the sweater

Religion aims to negate sense pleasure

While ad execs tryin’ to get to know you better

I’ll be knittin’ a shield if the weather gets wetter

.

A million ways to get paid and slain,

Punished by time, fines, and canes

Whipped in the gallows and tricked on the plains

Illusion makes slaves from both the sick and sane

.

Loss found himself cheated by Gain

Just as Abel was murdered by Cain

Praise was accosted and accused by Blame

While Infamy slandered Fame’s good name

.

Follow the muff, and swallow the bluff,

They say, “death is emptiness, life is hollow ‘n stuff

Fuck for a thrill, better live & shoot to kill

Life is a boot made for walkin’, footed by a physical bill!”

.

Advertisements wherever we go

Coulda traded bitcoin for a house in Oswego

I put all my savings on a Hail Mary free throw

While a little distracted from TV static free flows

.

How many likes to get to the center of an ego?

One, two, three, leggo my eggo & pass the chorizo

Blame chemtrails, chemfood, chemdrugs & tv shows

Cheap Neanderthal thrills for the man from Encino

.
Before we go, some questions burning up my loins:

How does a nation under God divorce its coin?

How come the news makes everyone paranoid?

Why does post-industry man seem to destroy?

.
How many dimes dropped before a banker’s fined?

How much vegan coke gets a burner high?

How much acid turns your problems wise?

How much medicine heals a sick twisted mind?

.

Tighten up the space and loosen the form

Our peasant hopes and dreams seem to feed worms

Persistently, our ideas spread like seeds on fallow farms

Resilient and firm, our love carries no harm.

Sour Mash Doubts

Doubts and guilt, doubts and will

I want a bout with honesty, but still

It ain’t right that I write only to share,

so I walk ‘til I’m naked, alone, and scared

 

Working on a world made up of lines

a jagged sawtooth, I am dusty hammer tines

aging slowly, rusting like nails in the times

relevance buried in the “who, what, where, why?”

 

I watch you succeed, I watch you spiral and fail

I watch you unbridled, through a window unveiled

This whole time, we thought our calling had sailed

It was tomorrow we were following, on road & on trail

 

Yesterdays poem becomes todays advice,

biting me in the ass, these words I read twice,

You counted the cards ‘n I loaded the dice

Who could expect an asshole to play nice?

 

Every bee stung me, walking to the hive

I can tell you that I’m lucky to be alive

Back on battlegrounds we strive to survive

Us crossing lines, so quick to chance lives

 

I chamber a round, ‘cus death shoots hollows

Most men just want a war drum to follow

To give them some honor, sacrifice, and bravado

warping the story ‘til each man is Picasso

 

The drones are marching through sweltering heat

While others dodge illusion and deceit

They see a carpet crawling, rats up to their knees

Fighting for a feast while spreading disease

 

One beer at a time, one breath at a time,

Wasting money, it’s peace I can’t buy-

Could you spare a little peace of mind?

Or else cut a line and pour me some wine

 

If you accept my conditions of suffering,

I’ll accept myself and everyone else

I am my own hostage, couldn’t you tell

Pay my ransom or throw me in the well!

 

Envious of those who grow rich beyond riches

knees grow weary, digging penniless ditches

Rolling the bowl, inhale both genie & wishes

Life is joke between three laughing witches

 

Mash in the chamber, I am the changer

my experiences distilled be the only remainder,

Gulping and splashing drops upon strange anger

sharing libation and handshakes with strangers

 

I walk in the woods to stalk a truth I can kill

I’ll beat it and twist ‘til it lies naked & still-

kill or be killed, fulfilling a beast of will

We’ve got a full bottle and I’m a-cooking still

 

My song is a fly humming through wide open blue

My darling is a harp, playing faithfully and true

My heart is a snake, made of flesh and sinew

We left the apple on the limb, and a new tree grew.

A Sheltered Heart

 

A sheltered heart lives

As an inmate of the chest

But through a slit comes light

For the songs of all things blessed

 

 

A sheltered heart is safe

From the ache of the outer call

Yet it knows not itself

Nor why it exists at all

 

 

A sheltered heart contemplates

And grows beyond all doubts

The space between walls shrinks

In joy, the heart cries out

 

 

A sheltered heart longs

For a world beyond the walls

But it knows not how to escape

Nor why they were built at all

 

 

A sheltered heart moans

And blames the other ones

Yet the etchings on the walls

Only this heart could’ve done

 

 

A sheltered heart learns

The origin of its pain:

The design for the cage

Were made in its own name

 

 

A liberated heart sacrifices

Protection to be free

A gift, well-deserved

And trusted unto thee

In Memoriam of 2016

In memoriam of 2016.

 

You were a year. From start to finish, your sum is the increment of time occupying a calculable distance across space. You gave me the feeling of certainty. You convinced me that time is tangible.

Between you and me, you weren’t a bad year.

It helps me convert this collective mass of moments into a solid human aggregate. Put simply: I like to anthropomorphize the years.

Your name was Joey. You had a mole on your left cheek & a pencil-thin mustache. Your hair was parted in the middle where you’re been examining your hair loss every morning. You liked honey mustard on your hotdogs & you’d only masturbate on Sundays, for discipline. You had two pet mole rats & you’d feed them Ritz crackers and ice cream sometimes. You had a nervous habit of itching your belly button and smelling the lint. It smelled like crab cakes made with fake crab. You weren’t a bad man, but you had some ill-intentions that were well-disguised beneath a propensity for tipping 25% gratuity on lunch & dinner. You’d take food off your neighbors plate when he wasn’t looking. You were perpetually 10 minutes late for work and you lied to your dentist about flossing.

 

You spent your last day waiting quietly in the rain at a bus stop. You were wearing a wool blazer that had gradually been soaked through a leak in the skylight. The bus schedule had been changed without notice. You waited until hypothermia killed you blue.

Now that you’re over, I’m not so sure what I’ll do with this old calendar.

Even worse, now that you’re gone I’m not so sure about time.

Where does time live when there is no calendar to keep tabs on it?

I can’t get another 2016, Joey. I just can’t.
I spent a lot of time in 2016 forgetting about time.

You know what I accomplished? The cells in my body continued to grow & decay in strict relation to my surrounding environment. I observed these processes in unison. It sounded often like music, which I enjoyed halfway despite my immense boredom at classical arrangements.
There’s a lot I want to say to you now that you’re gone, Joey.
I wrote this poem for you:

They say that every rose has it’s thorn,
And every shape has its form.

Just like every clock has its hand
And every native lives on land.

Every candle has a wick
And every prostitute charges, even for a lick.

Every square has four corners, every circle has none
Each day lives through darkness, just like space holds every sun.

As a relative concept, time is pretty cool. It makes sense.

It’s something I can read. It lives in shadows and it’s written mostly on the wall.
2016’s abrupt end left a lot of questions lingering.

In an expanding universe, does time expand?

If so, do our clocks compensate for that expansion or does the watch shop sell expansion packs?

These things, I fear, we’ll never know by thinking.

So long & thanks for all the dust, 2016.

I’ll think of you during my next few bowel movements as the meat of the year filters out my intestines & swirls gradually down the porcelain highway to Shittsville.

Alcoholism for Kids (A song about DIY Booze)

Here’s a children’s song I wrote.It’s about homemade booze:

My bottle is a hole in a bucket, a hole in a bucket

A hole in a bucket
When I plug the holes, my bucket overflows, 

my bucket overflows
If we don’t use the water, we’ll lose the water

we lose’ll the water, we’ll lose the water
California state is hella thirsty, 

hella thirsty, hella thirsty
So let’s make a gutter for all the water

put it in a barrel, put in a barrel
We can to the orchard, pick us some apples, 

pick us some apples, pick us some apples
In that water we’ll pour a little sugar,

Just a little dash, pour a little dash,
When that water starts a-bubbling, we add the apple mash, add the apple mash, add the apple mash
Wait three weeks and have yourself a drink, 

have yourself a drink, before you start to think
Man, with all this juice I could be making fuel,

Making a killing, breaking rules an’ making fuel
We gone to the junkyard to get some copper,

Get some copper, and look out for coppers
Then we cook the wine and sell it to the neighbors,

 sell it to the neighbors, and sell it to the neighbors
Now we got holes in our livers, 

holes in our kidneys, and holes in our heads, 

I fell down the ladder with a hole in my bladder, 

while my belly gettin’ fatter. 
Oh Daddy, my head don’t feel pain

burning high octane, 

no pain And big gains with high octane.

dope dreams

this morning I had a dream

of fixing a shot

from 4mg of hydromorphone

with an old friend

 

I mashed the tiny white pill

into fine powder

anticipating the rush

as I began to top the spoon off

 

the skies dark,

the window open

some deep breath blew powder from the table;

covering me in dust

 

trying to contain it,

I laughed nervously

hoping my friend would not be offended

that I didn’t care what had happened

narcissism (hopefully) abandoned

I am unknowable!

as there is no limit to the depths of boundless space

forever, I remain a mystery to myself
.

and
.

this is alright with me;

myself & I
give up / give away

don’t expect me to be ANYTHING
.

it is enough to be at peace

than alternately craving more

and let down for less

Full Circle
swallowed whole

I am content to be alive

whether staying in a cardboard box

or a mansion

if you don’t accept me

as I am right now

than you are not my family,

you are my undertaker

under guise of motivator
.

if you think you know me,

stop thinking

if you think you know yourself,

breathe & change
birth is imminent
death is imminent
it’s going to be okay

.

I love you.

losing life to petty things

life is lost over petty things
an argument at the bar
a knife in the ribs,
steel toes scatter bits of scalp and skull
across liquor-stained linoleum

petty human-conceived things,
like pride and respect
derange and rearrange us

life appears so cheap
until cancer diagnostics come back
malignant
and the bill is so steep;
maybe that’s the fiscal cliff
we’ve heard so much about

I’d fall off
if they push me
oh to fall away,

dangling from the edge
I’ve gone there once
and I’ll sure go again

I’ve seen the guy in the mirror
half-dead
watching who it hurts
most

We burned an eternity to learn
Hell is not a place you go;
it’s a place
you haven’t left yet