ingenuous advice, disinterestingly

Truth or beauty

can not be reduced to one word.
You have something to say?

Speak on. You'll be heard. Bla

bla, blah BLAB! like I do!

Like I like.

It's once you've fallen off,

that you'll never forget
it's a bike

urn

I can't help

the days flying by, you know. The pace
that I set for myself is firm. It's
uncompromised. Non-negotiable. I will fill
in the gaps with the ash mixed in, over smashed
blacked pieces of what won't burn,

and I will win.

timing

Timing myself on
an antique watch, which
they pretty much all are, by this time -

I am running my thoughts half-speed, to see
if the seconds will stretch, whether
only in perception
or memory,
I am pacing

a personal best. Like tigers
in cages, prepared to eat. But so much preferring

to kill. Such is life. Lost a step,
you're selected out. Your use is now

almost complete.

You hang ripe

for the kill, as your juices turn
inside, and you exercise this last

of your lives.

The approach
will be slow,
and bittersweet. Taut

as a bowstring, sharp

as a knife, inhaling the scent

of somewhere close by,

the meat.

failsafe

Suicidal ideation
's
never a thing I bothered with. Except
for the thrills of plummeting cliffs,
with my lungs aching hard from a hike in the sun,
a smile spreading over my face, looking down

leaning out -

the thought of the waves, just a little bit
sick, so far below

as the brink falls

all the way down,
to a diamond migraine glitter of sparks
- millions of broken white piercing shards
exist
in the eye, lie dancing
a skein
in the ocean mist, or

I
am
visiting my dad's house, with all
in its place, put away -
and the growing heaviness
in the knowing look
of a silent and menacing,
freshly-cleaned

gun.
We know
where we think it is. A place
for everything, in this place. And me?

I'm a tease.

I would not stand a chance against myself.

Before I could glance
with that look of alarm, before
I could even act, or react
in the nick of no time to waste
I would throw myself down,
or take myself out.
Remove the threat,
in the moment it ceased
to be fun. Entertaining
such thoughts

is too easy

to even concern. I know

the signs, how they run
from the first to the very last
one. If they ever did grow

on my mind
to an urge,
an obsession, a shock

of decision made - it can't

go like that. I've learned.
I know.

I'm fine.

I am not that way.

And you know what? I could
never be.
I have already
learned. I could never

put

everyone
I've ever loved,
and whoever's loved me - through that plunge,

that drop
that shock

to that place, where suddenly all
I have been, who they knew

is burned, consumed every moment
that they knew me

- is gone.

Irretrievable. Permanently
disappeared.

Knowing they never knew what
they'd never in years,
in decades, believe

about me. Believe

I could do. Oh, no.

That never was me. It will
never come true. I have

a contingency plan, you see.

It would not be the first.

It would surely not
be the second - I wouldn't be new,
at this. No avoidable hurts.
The instructor would know

certainly, it was not her fault

She had taught it all clear,
and thorough,

and true,

to a serious, fun-loving,
competent man who she trusted,
with excellent judgment,

knew just what to do.

And I would.

It would not be the third.
Or the fifth,
or the sixth -

without further ado,
without further suspense,
the seventh would come,
for good. I would halt, review
my defense, ask silently
anyone present to stand and object,

close
my eyes,
and wish.

One last time - I would hesitate,
and be lost. Unsuspect.

I would lean farther out
than I'd ever done.

I would take my last beating
and kiss the sky, unspool weeks' worth
of spin-cycle sun, dry my face
as I'm pummeled and plummeting down,
quite believably all in fun.
I would

pull the cord taut, shoot the chute
that I packed myself -

with nothing to go amiss, silken wings
streaming out and up,
up away in the dying and blinding bright sun
with the whole wide world rushing into
eclipse.

Finally,

a target too big
to miss.

Everyone,

I know

would be crushed.

But when all's said and through,
consoling themselves, saying
however many times it takes

to catch, and stick:

what they always knew
about me would hold
fast, and they

would hold fast to it.

Had I ever once lied? Okay,

about anything big?

Was I fake?

No, just as I knew they would,
they would take the bait.

The gift: bought and sold. Never guessing
how long it took to make.
They would take it. They'd have to, see?
To redeem the past, and everything
everyone knew all along,
proceeding inevitably,

as many times
as it takes
they would say

- because
they'd still know
who I was

- they must. It's true.
They would never see.

It would be
understood.

One last leap of faith,
to keep in trust

between we who love.

It is over now.

What it always was,
and will always be,
is enough.

And somehow,
easy to do?

They will say it, you know.
And so will you.

And so you should:

"He loved life

so much.

The way he went out

is proof

of how thrilled he was, his life

was so good."

procedural notes

What was I just thinking about?
I was thinking, “Hmmmmm, I should go check

a thing. I forget
just what. And then,
as I was scrolling down the first place

I looked, scanning
to see if anything jumped
out at me like a picture of you
in the dictionary, to trigger "a-ha" or
"Eureka!" I thought again, “Hey.

Maybe

it isn't here, after all.

Maybe it's someplace else. But when
did I put it there? And what
could it have been? And where shall I check

next?"

Oh yes.

The human brain.
Of course!
This one.
Hi.

Just a mo ment

ok

we're in
These things

are so complex. You can not imagine

the subroutines. It's in here for sure.
Let's pick it clean. Or hell,

just file it away for now, and move on?

To the other thing, the I just now
can't quite recall. But it's on the tip!

of something's tongue, because before all of that,
I exactly know
what I tried to think. I was wracked
in the mind, in frustration raring
to go, tearing off and clawing abysses and brinks

in disgust (or what passes for contemplation, for me) and trying

to find where I left

the snippet of lyric that featured the phrase - Ah!

Yes! “cognitive dissonance”

- that I’d filed away to jot down, in a sec
which was only an hour or so ago
at best! And forgot

to do just that. Alas,
alack, alack alas, there
is nothing now left. And furthermore,

“Bummer.”

This place is a mess. These things always come to pass
away, leaving you none the wiser. It's just
they seem so locked-in and memorable when
you make that note to jot them down
next chance you get. Another shovelful

of bull shit, thrown in, you've plopped in clumps

where the roses don't grow, and wait for the points
of the thorns to grow in, like so many sharp

ideas you had. 'Til memory steals a loss

from win.

"I won’t be able to forget that," you know,
you're sure. It's just so
snick-click precision fit

inevitable. Oh, you wish!

We tend to forget: mental notes
aren’t worth the paper you plan to transfer them to
later. Mental notes are dish best served

to an elephant that never forgets, not
this God damn insincere alligator crying
over spilt whatever-it-was, whatever
-it-could-have-been, but never now. Mental notes

are good for being instantly lost upon filing away,
then turning up later
by weeks or months, unconnected to whatever
you’d meant to say. Without which

they make no sense! A dissonant chime,
missing its symphony by a mile - and worse,
you're never quite sure you've unearthed it
whole and complete, despite all
the deja vu that pours in

like eerie light, and you want to be sure,

except - why does it now suck!

Like an empty, amputated arm
still pinching itself

from the tourniquet

Is this what you get? To abuse your soul
in agonized taunt, by a trick of false memory

You curse yourself for not chasing it down
at the moment you'd noticed it first slipped the leash,
while the trail was hot! By leaps and jumps,

the lost could be found so easily, and lashed
and bound, and punished - by being

carved in stone. Imprisoned for good.

But it's no good now. You can dog that track,
but it's leading you on
to a trackless wood. You coulda, you shoulda

It never turns up, turns round

or comes back - even when

you can tell that you’re so damn close! You have
to give up.

Let it get good and lost! Then
finally, come snuffling back,
round your door, all wet
and draggled, having eaten its fill

of the wild,

to jump up and lap your nose. Sweet home! And, filled
up with triumph, like some dumb child
preparing to shout,

you shut your mouth. And swallow it down,

and swallow. Number one, at the moment,
you're all alone.
But supposing you weren't - there’s no way
to make this

a sensible boast, worth anyone's
while all that was going on - finally,

I
damned it all, and spat out some kind

of impromptu
quasi-poem. And I snatched
it up at once -
as a lesson, a warning,

an offering,

I carried it back
to my poetry blog, for a round of experimental
suffering - cruelly stretched out, mangled in
edited clumps, being painfully straightened, or

- contrariwise,

bent

to affected artistic effect, whatever
it doesn't want: intense,
intent, and ruthlessly purposeful:

to punish
itself

for not being what I lost, at all.

I'm sure that it's not. I checked.

I am now responsible, for whatever it was,

and wherever it went.

the fear

Sometimes I lay me down, awake
asleep, and paralyzed between
the night

and day.

And terrified.
The first time, it was aliens.
I knew it was,

by dream logic. That's how I later realized

it was a dream. I didn't see

a single living alien being, but

I knew who they'd come to get.

I lay there on my back, considerably

upset, and waiting worse.

I'd seen a ring of glowing white
emerge, in circled symbols of a kind

unlike you ever saw. Revolving,

slowly,
on the ceiling, right before
my very, very eyes

- this sight

was not just in my mind. I knew

paralysis

was just the start. A glow began

outside

- and went away.

It was a car.

I was awake.

Third time, the bedroom door
was open - and a shape, an ordinary
shape,

was standing, still. Outside
the door - the living room, ironically.

Not coming in. There was no one alive

this woman could pretend to be.

I knew it was no burglary. This bitch
was supernatural. This shape

was here for me.

To kill.

I stared her down, just long enough
for her to move, to prove
malevolence and will.

And I woke up

The bedroom door
was standing shut.

As movement flew back into limbs,
with day broke wide through window blinds,
I rolled from bed, and

and stretched, and yawned,

and felt quite well-disposed
to humankind.

oldest soul

Whenever she fell,
it was some kind of world-record
and she hit so light,
there wasn't even a crater
but the world was affected,
as much as she's not.
And no one could hate her.
Wherever she steps,
the whole damn planet
is that much lighter

from the lift it gets
under her firm tread

as she's lifting it up
and rolling it over
step by step running
to see what's next.

She's gone off ahead,
again, I suspect. She's been
all around and around,
forever or close enough

for government work,
or to win a match
to settle some bet.

But when she came down,
it was not for nothing

apparently it was just
for some jerk.

He must be some catch
to have caught her eye

from top of the highest cloud in the sky

over all the earth.

the audience

I can't
paint
the side of a vehicle beef hazard over without
alerting the truth marshal. It isn't against

state of the art norms and mores or I'd be

hung in decisiveness and unable to come
up with a single objection to all

that's allowed. Trust me, bewildering
arrays of liberty haw and hem us in
to no purpose anyone is free
to say. The point?
It's not power, or
authority that compels or prohibits

me,

just me. Who's to say why

me. I won't.

I simply won't say why, but
I'm the only one who.

So you know where to.

The question is closed.

badge of courage

Is it just me, or
are people freer now about admitting they're fucked-up
on social media, at least? Not necessarily
in person, or on a phone call

"Hi. I have chronic pain and anxiety issues
IT'S REAL"

but putting it out to the world as a statement,
via the internet. It's like a movement, or

maybe it's just my friends. They have gone
on the offensive, defiant, confrontational:
this shit is real. I don't think

it's just them.

It seems like the world.

In any case, I know how they feel

explaining the joke

Explaining the joke isn't funny, they say
I wish someone could explain to me why.
I find it hilarious every time.
The joke's just a little trick of mine
to get that explanation in, and let it shine.

legacy

Someday, they'll all be sorting it out,
what I've left of my life, and they'll notice

I wasn't considerate.

Which is I guess is right.

gratuitous

There isn't anything left
or anything less, of whatever
it was I need to do. But
there never was. My whole life,

to this point, has as far as I know
been good and true. Gratuitously

so. I know at some core

that I really needn't have even been.
I don't feel diminished

by knowing this. My innocence

is some kind of sin.

dilemma, conundrum, paradox

Dilemma, conundrum, paradox are all
different things. Dilemma sounds like
a yogurt of a less-popular flavor, like
lemon, or lime. There's a lip-smacking
sourness to it. Conundrum on the other hand
sounds like a fun drum to bang on, even
if you're not getting anywhere, you know
there's either a solution or it's no
problem.

Paradox, on yet another hand -
which suggests you've brought someone else
into it, a third hand to hold
the thing you can't make sense of,
but everywhere you test it, seems

true

despite the tension of its
contradictions.

obstacle

You can't write a poem
about wanting to write a poem. I mean,
I can,
I've done several, but

that isn't really the poem you wanted
to write.

my film review of Dunkirk

This turd
of a prestige flick
was plodding and enigmatic. Cut and paced
like an art film
that wanted to be both intimate
and significant, its story

was too big for it - despite
(one would think) it was not
so very big the filmmakers
couldn't have made sense of it
to us, with our bird's-eye view.

We never get
a sense of the undertaking
until, suddenly, we see

all these boats! By then it's
over. We've been following around
characters on the edges of things, or
too deep in the thick to see with
their heads down and bodies flying. These,

at least, all seem to be human
beings. Most of them as confused as we
are, thrust in the midst of things
none of us can understand. This may have been

the film's point. Its desired effect.
If so, bravo.

It wasted my time,
but I enjoyed it while it was
going on. I kept thinking

it would come together

into something.

unironic requiem

Anyway, I'm sure glad irony's over
I never understood that crap, it went on
and on, forever seemingly, and over
my head. I couldn't recognize it

if it bit me instead of just

cruising past unnoticed, honking
its horn, flashing its tits,

man. Irony was everything
in those days, and the irony is

I don't even know what it is.

past mastery

mastery is acquired effortlessness
the hardest thing ever to learn.

it takes years
and years, working hard

you train

your eye
and mind
and hand
and arm, and
everything else

involved in the practice you chose,
to devote your work and time. And one day,

you forget all you know, and make beautiful music

or forms and shapes
in space or on paper

or somebody's face,

and away you go

wanting to be here

I got a postcard the same day
in the post. A bold design
in white and dark blue:
a big sun in the middle
of a small squared sky,
rays radiating out to clouds
above, and trees
and beach and waves
in a semicircle below,
with lines all through
all swoopy and straight
and underneath it says
"wanting to be here"

wanting to be here

wanting to be here. I haven't

turned it over yet. I want

to suspend the surprise a bit.

I'm trying to decide

what I want from it.

the long lullabye

That's all for tonight.
Call it over for now.
We'll go to sleep angry,
and wake up somehow.

Perhaps we can meet
in dreams, unaware
that there's anything wrong
waiting for us, out there

when we wake up. I know
it will all come back, then.
And we'll still be in love,

or we'll try to pretend,
or we'll fight our way through

to the end.

The stars don't even know their own light.

Because they have a sense of proportion.

Because they have priorities.

What are your priorities?

The reachless expanses of space spinning out to infinity?

Or the things you can reach and touch,
that can reach and touch you?

People are mightily significant in the latter realm.
Each of us can be potentially the biggest thing
in another's life: more significant

than all the universe outside the solar system
put together - which it isn't.
The potential significance of a human being
to another human being is that cosmically huge.

It makes more than that difference.
As a species,
too,

our significance on this planet
has been huge. Dominant. Potentially world-breaking.
Significance can be for bad or good.

So far as we yet know, though, humans
are the only things capable of creating
and receiving significance.

Capable of signification.

The far-flung stars signify much to us.

Do they signify anything at all to the stars?

If you say yes, you're just making-believe.

Don't pretend to me, love. You know you are.

Another thing we do. Another thing
that so far as we yet know, only we do.

If we find another species of being
capable of signification and imagination,
that couldn't diminish what we have,

only enrich it.
But until we do,

we have no reason at all to conclude
we're anything other than the source

of all significance in the universe.

Pending another confirmed source.

So far, there doesn't seem to be one.

The stars don't even know their own light.

At least, there's no reason to believe they do.
Not like we do.

So when you stand under the wheeling night sky
trying to reach all those lights with your
so-called so insignificant mind,

reflect: as far as you know,
you're standing on the only place
in all that vastness, where such reaching out

is going on.

And that thing you're reaching with
- your human mind -
is the only thing known that even tries

to discover and assign such

cosmic

significance.

Don't kid yourself. The rest of us
all do it as well, you know. Quite as well
as you. Idly, we'll marvel and gawp
out at the skies,
at the distant and relatively insignificant

stars. Myself,

I glory in them, from right there
where I stand. Their brilliance,
and especially their distance.

It’s mind-bending.
But it's trivial.
And through it all,

I don't lose sight of the things
I really can reach and touch,
which can reach and touch me. The things

that really signify, mightily, meaningfully.

I have a sense of proportion, you see. And humans

are far more than just significant.

And not just to me.

pinprick manifesto

Sometimes, with poetry you just
write as beautifully as you can,
and screw rhyme. It's called

free verse,

but sometimes
they forget to write beautifully, and
sometimes I forget to screw rhyme

kissing lessons

After first kisses
come better and best kisses (though
first ones have
unique sweetness, it’s true.)
A kissing relationship
should be like conversation:
no one is only talking
or listening. Each of you is both
teaching how you kiss, and
learning how the other kisses. You begin

passionately, furiously -
or tentatively, yearning. You shift

gears together, pushing speed
tearing around your frantic curves
and powering through straightaways,
pulling back slowing down going deeper

into the abyssal bliss
of a moment drawing out
into infinite sense
with less than a conscious thought

- getting yourselves completely lost,
and if you're luckiest,
finding yourselves
in the other. You both

know how to kiss! You've kissed before
- you've seen it
in the movies at least. It’s basic
and it's imitable.

But neither of you knows
how you kiss - how you two kiss.
You learn by paying attention
to what the other is doing,
by giving into it
and giving back to it. You pick up
tips and tricks to what they like
wordlessly.

You surprise each other
and yourselves as well,
and if your styles and tastes and likes
and wants and needs
are a good match, compatible -

you'll soon be ascending
to levels of mutual mastery.

adventures in babysitting

Wizards make great babysitters
if the child's potty-trained
- but if the wizard changes baby,
you might find your baby changed.

byway

I missed my chance in the mist,
and found myself stranded in a present
I'd never left, having always lived
in the now, in the moment,
I couldn't return to the past
or guess what the future
would hold, except

maybe more of the same
sort of thing that it's always held.
It's always been me, right here
right now, very different

from heaven or hell,
but beginning to get just
a little old.

unobverse

Always a bridesmaid,
never a God. The left
doesn't know that the right
one is odd. Having always
believed
propaganda
reports, and taken it
all in the skirt or the shorts,

It's not too late to see
there is nothing between
right and wrong but opinion
and fact, and neither one

strong,
or sure,
even clean,  
but they're free.
So you might as well flip

out on me and back. The coin
in my pocket is tails,

but if you make the call?
Then we'll see.

definition

A soul
is the damage a body inflicts
on the spirit inhabiting it. What once
was so pure, perfect and featureless
has become as it grows mature,
and you grow into it, so much more
featureful - and less
pure: so how

does it fit?

Do you soar
above yourself, disdaining
this realm, or sink
beneath without care
or qualm, or just go

on and on, and on
and on

Snippets from the Diary of a Rogue Ad Man

When life gets you

down?

GO GATORADE. Gatorade
is like the tits on a nuclear squid.
You start sucking on that glowing
ambrosial nectar, suddenly it turns

your whole DNA crazy
like you're breathing underwater,
staining your bike shorts with black ink
and fighting crime. One time,

I got thrown out of a top advertising firm
for the boldest pitch I ever had the balls
to put over the plate. It went wild, but boy

did I turn a few heads on the way out
the door as I was escorted by an honor guard
of security's best and brightest! When I hit

the street,

I had a Snickers
to recoup my wits
and stoke the flames a bit. Packed with peanuts,
Snickers Is A Motherfucker®. Thus fortified

by that sweet hit of chocolate, caramel
and a peanut crunch, I eased on down the road
with a heart as heavy as all the skies above.
It's true,

I had suffered a setback.

But I didn't actually work for the firm
anyway, and technically
they hadn't even invited me inside.
So I counted it pretty light in the loss column

- while each of the heads that I'd turned
with my bold presentation was an undeniable win.

I was sure to have better luck at the next firm. My next stop

would not even know what hit it.

meditative

These times are so frightening for all of us
what with what's going on in the news
Oh, didn't you see? Better run,
look now. It's worse than

you even can think

trust me

"the final possibility"

Are you the helpless twig
before my powerful storm?
But I don't want that.
I want you mighty oak after.
Are you the gentle slave
of my every wish? But
I don't want that.
I want your mind: Modern.
Womanly. Implacable. Are you

every thing I want in a woman,
ever? I don't want that. You need
to challenge me. GROW UP, woman. Tell
culture and media and peer group
fuck off! Time for you to call
shots. Finally, what I want,
babe. Ace this! Moment is
yours. You got it you know it
for real you know. Thank me

by BLOWING MY MIND

what empathy is

Empathy is not
illusion.

It’s imagination. It’s not hard
to hear words like hooks,
tearing and caught in a voice
you love, to look into eyes
lit with rage and tears - it’s not hard

to imagine yourself in the same place.
You aren't,
but you are.

It’s hard not to be
Wishing you could be
there in the same place
they are, to help them fight,

to pull them out.

Aching with hopeless rage yourself,
that you can’t be! That you can’t help.
Not really help. Not help what’s wrong.

But you’re here, now. With them, at least.
At least you can grasp their arm, their hand

as you both hold on. You can pull for them,

even if you can’t
pull them out.

Pull on
Pull through
the best you can do,
which is pitiful to you.

You feel next to useless,
but you hold on
for whatever it can mean
to them right now,

to have you here,
when they're so much in need.

You can be here for them,
even if you can’t really join them
in the horrible place where they are.
It’s so hard not to be able to.

It isn't hard, empathy.

Just the hardest thing
in the world, maybe. You tell
yourself you’d gladly suffer yourself,
rather than see them go through this

with you helpless to help. And no probably,

it wouldn’t be "gladly" that you'd do it.
But given the choice, you really would choose.
To be there, if only you could.

Empathy is no illusion.

You’ve been through thirty-two flavors of hell
yourself, and it’s pretty damn faint

if you can’t imagine yourself now, where they are.
How it feels, what they’re going through. Especially when

they just told you

every bit of how it feels.

Especially when they made every word tell,
especially as you reel from the hits.
Empathy’s not illusion.

It’s just imagination.
It’s just a very small

amount
of imagination.

Not even a leap! Not when
you’ve been there yourself,
or places as bad. Not when
it’s someone you love.

It’s one small step.

So real you wish you didn't have
to take it.

But there's no way in hell
you won't.

people love "authenticity"

Why do people love "authenticity"?

Is it just
their whole lives through
they've always
heard the word applied so positively,
to some thing

that can't be otherwise
explained
itself? Some deep simplicity:

It is itself,

and true to some tradition of itselfness
it exemplifies,

others can't: others try.

This is the what
you'll have to find,
or you'll never know why
what you've learned
refers to

Modern Man (Theme Song)

Modern Man
can do any thing
with the strength of seven billion

and gathering,

With the understanding, in modern terms
that gender being cultural fiction and all,
or so we've learned
so we can see
that Modern Man is you
and me

AND
TIME IS NOW!
THE MOMENT OURS
DON'T KNOW WHAT'S NEXT?
YOU KNOW WE CAN!

IT'S FINALLY
IT HAD TO BE
HERE COMES THE DAY
IT'S MODERN MAN!

Modern Man's
got active blood
and etherwaves and satellites
It's learning exponentially
It's learning that

it's not enough

to get it right
by increments
takes guts and blood
and time and sense
and money spent

AND
TIME IS NOW!
THE MOMENT OURS
DON'T KNOW WHAT'S NEXT?
YOU KNOW WE CAN!

IT'S FINALLY
IT HAD TO BE
HERE COMES THE DAY
IT'S MODERN MAN!

We just found out the greatest news:
that we control the climate now!
Without our even trying to!
Or soon we will - now we've found out.

What we can change: We can control.
Now that we know - it just
takes knowing how.

And knowing how
has, by degrees, been
pretty much our specialty
- so easily! our knowing goes.

Check out our cars and phones,
and clothes!

AND
TIME IS NOW!
THE MOMENT OURS
DON'T KNOW WHAT'S NEXT?
YOU KNOW WE CAN!

IT'S FINALLY
IT HAD TO BE
HERE COMES THE DAY
IT'S MODERN MAN!

epic interlude with minor exposition

The mighty she-warrior sheathed in tight
and flowing dragonsilk, stood

jutting out like a rock
outcropping,

to overlook

nothing: the hugely-shifting

mountainous drifts of colored glass
sand,

so softly bright,

all that remained of the storied
land
of bottles,
long since upended,
their contents drained, and sheathed

her sword. A

scimitar, technically
surpassed in excellence
by no known blade, forged
in the heart of a lesser star
of a now-obscure reality
show, who had turned
blacksmith after all

his legendary royalty
checks dried up, and only

surrendered the sword
to her,
after much sly banter.

It seemed like ages ago

Now
Her sheaths
both of leather and dragonsilk
were stained by the blood
of her enemies' friends

it's the closest she's ever come

to revenge.

Looking out and down, dully
across the dunes, duly-glittering

as the moon slid up, and off of them like dew

She knows about
what she always knew:

She has not yet gone too far,
and she has yet
much too far

to go.

Before she's through

body anger

body anger,
lately.

The pain,
the falling apart
isn't great, but I can see

or imagine from all stories told
that it's going to be.

It's going to be great.

And oh, the rue and the irony then,
over all the times that I doubled
in tears, laughing at old people

doubled in pain, unable to do
what they'd always done, unable to use
what they'd always used, and unable to save
the smallest part of respect that they'd gained

in a lifetime of labors, trickling lost
down invisible drains. What fun,

after all
that has happened to me,
it will happen to me. I guess
It's deserved.
For making up lies

just a few lines up -
About how I laughed.

For whatever it's worth
I never enjoyed my youth,
not once, at such an expense
while it's flown half past

and now,
knowing I never again
may get the chance, I look at myself

and begin to laugh

humanity more than God itself"

"I love
humanity more than God itself"
I declared, satisfied
and pretty sure

I was saved

by ambiguity, there.
As I always seem to be.
I cannot tell a lie,
in some sense
- no matter how wet

the cherry sap

might drip from the ax
behind the next tree.

In defense of hypocrisy

People who cry "hypocrisy"
are the ones offended by the fact
that others don't even want to be
self-righteous - a game they all think
they're so good at. They say, they see

"First women say they hate being hit on
and then they flirt!" or

"First Dempublicans hate Repocrats
doing that - then they do it!"

As if all of them say it, or hate it,
or do it.

As if saying it's bad could make doing it
worse.

I think that's it. Their self-righteousness

is a nasty, sarcastic, cynical pose. They believe

it is only believing its wrong
that can make an act wrong. As if

in a world without clothes, we would all
quite naturally become prudes.

As if it's a curse to be able to choose, if
we also say why we choose?

As if the worst is to even presume
we can know why we choose, or say why we do.

What offends them is that you can tell right from wrong,
at all. Not any amount of the wrong you do.

The sin is to tell.

The sin is to say that there's anything wrong to do.

Well I guess we're all sinners then. Big surprise?
Not so much. But we're better off able to tell, I judge.
And we're better for hearing the arguments, to decide

for ourselves,
in consequence,
which of them make sense.

We feel our way up by touch.

And sometimes judge poorly, do badly, do wrong.
Do the very damn thing that we knew all along,
and said as much: it is bad to do.
But at least,
to be able to know all along.
At least to accept
where we have gone wrong. And confess

to each other, come clean. Try again,
and tarnish anew.

Instead of complaining, in rich, dripping tones
at any who dares to suggest to you
there are things that can stain us at all,
or that we could amend, or atone
where we fall.

To say there are things we should try not to do.
It's offensive to them, to hear this
from you, or from anyone else
who they know is wrong.

Which is perfectly naturally, everyone.

You must practice perfection or not
preach at all! Say these bright Pharisees
of high dudgeon and moral appall.

The doctor whose practice consists in advice
took a hypocritical oath, since he smokes!
But he tells others not to smoke!

That's not right! That's not nice!

Yes, he knows it's not right.
So he tells you it's not, you dope.

Make up your mind, hypocrite,
imbecile:

Do you,
or do you not want a light?

At the end of your rope,
you can hang, or mope, or swing
as you please. You can say what is right
or is wrong, you can say why you choose. Yes,
even to me. For my part, I can tell you
what's right from wrong, myself.

We can both compare notes,

easily, in bottles or staves
and drink to intoxication, in time

to the music it makes
where we disagree.

For who are we, anyway?

To tell right from wrong?

You are you, of course.

I'm me. Who else?

If you don't mind my asking.

And if it's important, what matters most
to you, why wouldn't you tell?

Afraid, to be hung by your own decree?

Charge! Try, be acquitted
as best you can

of hypocrisy.

limits of conception

perhaps the worst conceivable thing
would be falling asleep in the light
of God's love, and waking to find
it had all been a dream.
I say perhaps
the worst conceivable
partly because who knows
what conceivable things one may
conceive at some later point,
to disturb one's peace, or
dreams, or waking serenity,
which one has never had
in the first place, and partly
because I'm not quite sure
it's conceivable at all. I mean,
going to sleep in the light
of God's love, and waking to find
it was all a dream? What the hell
does either part of that mean?
Perhaps it's a mistake
to think one can conceive it
at all. In which case
it could not be the worst
conceivable. Anyway, one feels
one could always do worse
than just what's real

usual sci-fi gloss

A lot of people fear me
because of how easily intimidated
they are. But when pressed
and pressed hard,
they admit:

the truth of it is,
I'm such a thoroughly
admirable and stainless
human being.

They just didn't want
to admit it at first

because it seemed wrong
to them some how,

that one guy

could have it all: brains,
minds, hearts, hands, STAVES,
CUPS AND SWORDS! It's like

I'm a walking Deck of Fortune,
sometimes, like Rick Deckard
at the start of Blade Runner, speaking
his easy patois to the noodle guy, everybody
after him 'cause he's always on the CASE - next
thing you know,

some huge origami gaffe is misconstrued
as a unicorn dream hint, and people start

saying the guy's a robot. But fuck that
no, he's not. he's
ALL MAN.

And I know what that's like,
as people will readily concede
when pressed.

consequitur

Consequences are immense. The only things

that hold us to.
Potentially, and make
us great, I guess. If we accept

they do.

Novel

There's nothing left of this life
I want to live, sometimes
except
there is more to experience. Even if
it's the same as was previous
in experience.
There are more
different people
to touch, I guess
to touch, with life
with light, with whatever

I have

to touch them with?

There is more of that.

There is more of it.

I am ready to go, you know
I have done enough, but

I can see there is probably more
to do.

It won't be new,
but to someone else,

it might be good
to do.

For them

And I never did give
a fuck
about something new.

Or did I? No,

oh well

Amen.