my Mind for Science

Yes! My mind is for science - my body
is for science as well. I will not leave it
to science,

I can't wait

that long
I am

hot all over, for science. IMPLEMENT
ME, science WORK
your immutable laws
upon my willing, physical form
- I will:
submit without plaint,
pliant to the pulls of your forces
and reactions that ignite

around and within me.

SCIENCE!! In you I have found a master, a
mistress, a servant, a
SLAVE - I am your Igor and your tyrant alike! Your
helpless experimental subject, as well
as the defiant lab-coated madman
throwing switches, playing
God with an inner glee
belied by His cold,
sneering exterior.

Science!!

Science is

what it's all about.

You do the GMO me and you turn yourself
around, into a potato, an ear
growing on each side of the eyes - I look

at most things from a cold,
detached perspective:

surprised.
My stern eye

collecting data, my
deeply-involved mind
probing, sliding the variables
*snik!*
into place, my

oh, my. No,

there are no mysteries,
only puzzles. And the puzzle with no solution?
Is a Law.

Every true problem has its solution,
and every solution,
its precipitate as well - I want
to take my wet,
jiggly brain

out of the top of my skull,
and weigh it. Measure it
gently with calipers, clip
electrodes to sensitive nodes, run
a jolt through it! Through the lobes
and ganglia and then - jam the whole thing back in! Still
steaming - snap and clamp the braincase
back shut! Seal the scalp and skin, and pick at,
pull away the pink, shiny, cut-like seams -

Coming away from my forehead, wrinkling
and shrinking as they pull loose
like glistening Saran wrap, sticky -

Leaving gleaming smooth soft skin, soft pink
- no scars.

I dispose of the weird evidence.

No experiment has ever occurred.

Perfect.

"Fully Impaired"

Pardon my drunken eloquence
When things I say are too much meant,
and you don't know how much to spend
in trust

Yeah, that's me, I'm prone to blackest fits
of flirtatious
depression

but you taught my bad mood a lesson
with just a flip of
your expression, damn

I want you
Damn I want you
Damn, I want you now. Damn,
I want you. Damn, I want you
Damn - I want you now

Sway the way we do, and we will
always catch ourselves in time
swing a little farther out,
and barely just pull back in line

Just across the line a little -
barely get your tiptoes wet!

ooo that water's much too hot
but once we're in it's fine I bet

damn,
I want you
Damn I want you
Damn, I want you now. Damn,
I want you. Damn, I want you
Damn - I want you now

Pardon my drunken eloquence
when things I say make too much sense
and you've got all this consequence
in mind

But next to this

a jolt of truth

consequences look like lies

consequences, anymore
- I can't see them past your eyes

damn

I want you.

days of cold cereal

Here's something
I've gotten better at over the years:
pouring milk into a bowl of cold cereal.

And it's odd, because
in the old days of old, I ate cereal
and my skills never improved at all!

now that it's a rare treat, though
- step back!
Recognize the flaws
in my technique - correct them.

The world 'cereal'

derives from Ceres, a greco-roman
goddess-type figure
who if I remember my mythology
right, was known for being raped
by the god of dead people and,
one assumes,
also for eating a lot of cereal.
But there's a nutritious truth
behind these myths! Which is:

Cereal.

we had Corn Flakes, Grape Nuts,
all manner of Chex, Life,
Buck-Wheats (wherefore art thou,
Buck-Wheats?), Shredded Wheat, Mini
-Wheats, Wheaties, Branny
-O's, Cheerios, Raisin
Bran, and Cracklin' Oat
Fucks.

I'm barely scratching the surface - you name it.
Except: no cereal with sugar
as the first ingredient.

(No Cap'n Crunch, Boo-Berry, Lucky
Charms) for those we had to hold out
'til Grandpop and Grandmom's
- which made those visits special!

We went through so much sugar, I swear
I would fill my bowl heaped
to a height and a half
corn-flakes balanced like a stack of Jenga, then
pour the milk on down and through (flashing
and splashing at all angles!), the milk level up
to the brim of the bowl. When I finished the cereal,
there would still be a half-bowl of milk
and I'd say, "Damn. Well, I guess
I need to pour some more cereal in

And four, five more heaping tablespoons full
of sugar.

I still love cereal,
but I never put sugar on anything now.

Must be some difference
in a child's metabolism. Sugar,
at that growing age,
is just what the body needs
- and that message is sent to the brain
and received! And acted upon. Rightly
so.

The word 'sugar'
derives from Sugos, the ancient
Mesopotamian god of youthful exuberance,
and hyperactivity.

her higher power

A disembodied eye
sits in the sky
but not enormous -
only life-size, only
just

like one of ours.
Far up, and out
of sight
- and grayish-brown,
not even blue! Not idealized,
just someone's humble, human

eye

looks down
from miles above

and can't see you.

"More perils of the workplace,"

Sometimes a memo

just reminds us of what everything already is.

Occasionally,

there's some new procedure in there.

Tucked away. You have to read

closely,
before the message self-destructs.

adjustment

Die like you were never alive. Live
like you were never born. Breach
like you were never so much as conceived.
Take punishment like you were never once warned.

"getting better"

death's getting better,
and better, and best
make my plans now
for futures
that dwindle in size,
as the picture sinks inward, the black
edges round
like an altitude sickness
before you crash down

beautiful, and kind of sad

beautiful,
and kind of sad
like frozen mist making cheery-colored diamond shapes across treelit christmas morning windows,
in the bare and frozen dawn as you walk by on the sidewalk outside towards the empty bus stop where,
eventually,
each morning,
your destiny comes to pick you up.

sober revelations

I make all the same revelations sober
as drunk,
Just slightly
less tightly-focused,
perhaps. But yeah, that's
all the same kind of stuff

I am always going to tell anybody
who asks.

Except more focused, drunk
- because drunk tangents fly by
like dragonflies and lightning bugs
and the eyes of my mind can't chase
them to follow, so I plod forward
on one path instead of how
I would soberly proceed.

Sober, I'm like "well wait,
let's also take a moment to chase
THIS implication - it could form some small part
of how I'm trying to put the whole vacant lot
of all that I mean on this topic into words
that really pick out every weed, wildflower
and piece of busted brick!"

There is no broken glass.
I cleaned out all the broken glass.

It ain't that kind of vacant lot.

explain away the sun

It's because of the vertices.
It's because of the slight
ellipses of the orbit, or
more accurately: the tilt
of axis that has us wobbling
in lockstep relative to

the sun.

This pisses the sun off,
to some degree, resulting
in SOLAR FLARES.

Basically at that point, the sun
becomes in everyone's eyes
and the only way out

is to go inside for a while
until it cools off. Sunglasses

can help you look cool,
too

Closure, Figure and Ground

And love is good despite its end,
which never justifies its means
its meanness, or its cruelty.
To end as friends,
or so it seems - and seeming was,
and is, and shall
be all there is
that we'll admit. We nail it down.
Our hands are held, on board, on point
- bang mallet hard, that peg will fit. And that is all
that we'll allow.

And that is all.

Until whatever happens now -
the picture hung in frame on wall

- has time to fall.

"Sick in Love"

there doesn't seem
to be a thing
that I can do

and you can see
I think you know, but
I'm not sure that you do

and you love me,
just not like that -
but sometimes it's like that, too

and we can see
but we can't tell
'cause when we combine
it gets way out of line, and
all our sense tense to quiver and dissolve
we just scare hell out of everyone involved, we are

sick
in love
you're sick
in love, with me
sick
in love - all of our life,
we've been sick in love
I'm sick
in love with you - sick
in love

we're just not alright

we threw away
important things
priorities

like mortgages
wedding rings
responsibilities

but we can't live
in love like that
where all that we've got is spent

the love you give
comes back to you
but the love that you save can't pay the rent,

when the ones who love you say
you've thrown it all away
we don't know where,
but we know we're gonna stay

sick
in love
you're sick
in love, with me
sick
in love - all of our life,
we've been sick in love
I'm sick
in love with you - sick
in love

we're just not alright,

we are
sick in love
you're sick in love with me
sick in love
all of our life, we've been sick in love
I'm sick in love with you
sick in love

we're just not alright

Immortality or Bust

Well, I think I'd like
to hang around as long as I can. I'd love
to see where we'll be in 500 years. It's
the surprise and the wonder
that make it so great
to behold
to see it unfold
all of it ours to have
and hold

Even assuming there's a heaven
where the scales will fall
from your eyes, and you understand
all the heart-piercing whys,
and you live forever in perfect, absolutely
perfect bliss, in paradise

- well, if so, it'll still be there
when I get there. If I do. Meanwhile,
this garden has and needs its weeds,
and some of them are beautiful.

I can't get enough of this.
I love this life.
Heaven's going to have to work
hard, to live up

to just what we can see in the light.

But I don't really want to be
immortal. I guess. Especially
if it means being essentially alone,
or continuously bereaved. I'm fine
with dying,

I fully intend - it's
the only thing on my bucket list. But

I love the view from here
where we stand,
where we lie down
in grass, at the top of a hill.

Still, it would be kind of cool
if it could be me and one other person
I loved. Both of us
could stay so long, I bet
we could make that work. I'm
totally fucking accommodating! As long
as I've got

a partner
who will meet me three-quarters of the way.

(I meet her seven-eighths.)

chemistry is the most important

I love chemistry! When I was a young man
they told me chemistry
was so important

- now that I'm older
I say yes, it is so. It's so, but it's more
than just so; it's so
so it couldn't even get any moreso! I think

chemistry is probably the single most important
thing in a relationship. I'm pretty much fluorine
emotionally, where chemistry's concerned that
element's a slut which I am too emotionally speaking
I will bond with anything, especially when I'm feeling
negative.

My best girl though aw she's a gas gas
gas but unfortunately - a little on the noble side
- still! Given enough oxygen it's all right now
in our jumpin' jack erlenmeyer flask -

with our bond pretty volatile, arguably
even unstable, but you couldn't ask
for stronger one, and as far as I'm concerned
it endures and it will endure. And

she's adorable, and Lord, I've lost track
of which electrons are hers and which ones
I'm just hanging on to for dear life!

Dear life,

how are you. Doin' fine? We're pretty much covalent
I guess is what I'm saying, but without that chemistry
that alchemy without that spark
of animal vegetable mineral electromagnetism -

I don't know even where we'd be

On the subjectivity of morality

So here's the thing,

bitches. You can't tell

right from wrong unless

you can also tell why.

Or what, how? Some
authority? (in which case
you DON'T know - you just
flip the buck up) some
dipshit absolutism? some
inscrutable gut hunch?

Get your fuckin' gut hunch

back out of my face, holmes

-- can't say why? Then you don't know. You

are one of the people for whom IT IS TRUE

that right and wrong are pure subjective

- and a cowardly brown stain on the seat of your pants.

Reason
can show its work.
But if your right
is right for no reason - you ain't
right.

Figure out your morality
first, before you presume to put it
on parade.

Correct.

As to patience

I have all the patience of stars in their courses,
of vast cosmic forces so surging and sprawled
they can't even decide: at the end of it all,
shall we pull it all back, or just let it ride?

Unreasonable Math

For a very long time now, well,
an eyeblink in geological terms; no wait,
a mudslide in geological terms? An eyeblink
in biological terms. A ring stained in wood,
in botanical terms. In relative terms,
a dead uncle.

In inverse cosmological terms, an eternity.
In terms of vague understatement: for a while. For
a very long time now, there have been no reasons
and I see no reason to start having them now. I have
no truck with reasons. I don't need
to explain my reasons. I don't cotton to
those. You're not the boss of me, but you
are pretty boss I must admit, and
I need to do a better job, frankly.
No reason.

It just feels like it.
Not even I feel.
It feels.

I am going to go worry some people.

I will use fingers,
and possibly lips, and possibly
a soft lush brush of some
delicious variation in texture
and sensation, and I will worry them
deep inside. I will worry them
at their borders, at their edges,
at their fringes and see
if they fray.

If they do, I will claim the fault
for the idea, and vice-versa, and
I will refute each of those claims,
and I will do it easily, each in turn.

See what they have to think about that!

Feel what they have to taste about that.
Hear what they have to stink about that.
Smell what they have to say about that. Halitosis,
you see, and synaesthesia: an unbeatable combination

you can't get anyplace else but the human brain!

Or so we perceive dimly, as if through a looking
twice. The human brain: a miracle of Intelligent
Evolution, now on sale for a song, for a steal,
for what that and a cup of coffee will get you,

which depending on the steal could be fine,
imprisonment,

I don't care.

There have been no reasons
since I gave up that last cigarette,
and the one after that,
and the one after that. Technically,
I guess, what I'm giving up
is less the cigarette
than the butt.

Are you surprised that I would give up the butt?

I couldn't help it.
I was in a corner. My health
was at stake. To be honest,
what I miss most now was that smooth,
relaxing, satisfying flavor
and you could say
this whole thing has gone South, not
even ventrally - which would not
be so bad! Which could be lovely,
depending on one's pet taboos
and the disparate acts and personal
variables of persons and attraction-math
that all add up (as far as you're concerned)
to the magic number 144 on your personal scoreboard:

Gross!

That's right, and you shouldn't be surprised.
I am running the dozens now. Ask your mother,
and she will tell you the same damn score, and
give no reason. She isn't the whore

in this particular yo' momma joke. Look
in the mirror.

I am.

tat too

This tattoo is sweet: left full sleeve,
an interlocked design of lightning
and clouds in whites,
blues
and golds,
right full sleeve a contrasting design
in greens with white accents, bright
reds and dark browns: flaming rocks
(meteors, essentially), crashing
into white-crested Japanese waves! Upon my
upper back?

A bat-winged snake-dragon with curving horns!
His tail trailing in a sinuous line
down along and to each side
of my spine; across my upper torso
a golden-furred, eagle-winged snake
-dragon with a stained-glass halo.

He would have a golden crown. I have

the artist already on board. Hand-picked
on a recommendation (I was lucky
enough to get to see some of his handiwork
- which I LOVED), also I have
an undertaker lined up who owes me
a favor. She's on board with a living will
and a signed waiver, and she swears

as long as we wait two (2) days

before the artist starts, there will be
no redness or swelling at all. Which means
we are go for closed-casket,
- closed glass-casket -
and a shirtless burial. The casket
should rotate.

I'd be strapped in.

What do you think? What's
your stance on leather pants?

So why do you still?

So why do you still want me to
any of the things you want me to?

Yes, I have to accept that "because
it's fun," works as an answer. But

a gleaming sharp hook through the heart
is fun? Or is it just fun to watch? Maybe
the same thing isn't the same between

us. Could be it could be less fun for me
than it is for you. I mean, I know,

it's my fault and my lookout to draw the line
anywhere I don't want to go, so you

can jump across it. And it's my call to catch,
if you do - but why do you? And why do you
want to?

If I knew,

then I could decide
whether I still want to,
too.

dreams, princess

G'night sweet

princess, tonight may you dream
on a dimpled bed of one hundred identical
chinese silk pillows, each
dream-soft, well-deep on the face-side,
bordered in a rich brocade of a thousand bright and pale
shades of white, and pebbled
on the cool side,
in a rich, shining perfect
cobblestone finish of large,
persian pearls. What strange pillows

in your bed.

Baroque; luxury without any sense to it - but
I say, sometimes
form doesn't need to follow function
to function. Sometimes form,
form,
form...sometimes we

may need to sink deep into the beauty of forms,
and the beauty of a form
for its own sake, in order that we
may awake, and function

refreshed
by a blessed simplicity not found outside
of the dream we forgot to write down,
but that has had us blushing
with a smile ever since.
Whatever it was,

sap

The sun's hot,
and it beats down on the pines
who open up the gaps in their knotty bark, and

breathe out sap

in preparation for Summer.

The advice of angels

Angels aren't known for giving great advice. I mean, let's
face it please: whatever
their coping strategies
might be, they do not bear
strongly upon the kinds of struggles you
are going
through, and are going to go
through - the path
you walk like a fool,
where they maybe would fear to tread (if
they gave it half a thought), but even there -
that thought
is entirely too hypothetical
to bother with, not
when you know they'd really only fly

over
that
bad patch.
What

is an angel going to tell you to do? - That will help
you?

Praise God, child. Sing, and praise
God and kill cities and firstborn,
child

memory gloss

The underlying idea seems almost intuitive,
though

doesn't it?
After all,

every time we consciously access a memory, we are not
only remembering the thing,
we are making a new movie
of the remembering
of the thing.

When we put the memory back, it will be changed

When we put it back, it will be with that added gloss. For
any frequently-recalled event, the original mote
of experience will - over
a lifetime - be almost
completely obscured

by the layers of mother-of-pearl we lovingly lave over it.

"Good Luck/Charm"

Life is mysterious. Destiny, ambiguous.
Fate is ambivalent. The possible - infinite.
Chance is a gamble. But risk, we can handle -

it's chaos and random, but we've got a hand in.
So here's to good health, here's looking at you!
Kid you not, there is naught in this glass to regret
- so let's drink to us now! It seems pretty much set,
I bet...

You can always get by on good luck and charm!
You can always rely on good luck and charm

Kid you not, there is naught, in this glass to regret
So let's drink! To us now, toast best-laid plans
With the shards in our hands, seems pretty much set,
I guess...

You can always get by on good luck and charm!
You can always rely on good luck and charm

Not a cloud in the sky
To build castles upon,
and the landscape is ruined
from all fallen down.
But it sure was a view,
from those heights we called home -

We two, with our banners hung snap in the sky
But it's better to live on the ground don't you know?
Where things root and can live,
and there's air to breathe
and room to grow, oh

We can always get by on good luck and charm!
You can always rely on good luck and charm
You can always get by on good luck and charm 
We can always rely on a good luck charm 

And it's best! Now to live on the ground, isn't it?
"Yes it is!" we admit and exclaim 'til it fits 
"For the best!" and I guess, in the meantime
we'll let this next, best, guess, rest...

We can always get by on good luck and charm!
You can always rely on good luck and charm

(bridge) the future's nice, I'm sure.
But you can't take it with you -
Any future we can make now,
Won't hold up when it hits you
And I'm kind of done with magic and spells,
incantations and books and bells and prayers,
But I'm not worried though
I've got my good luck charm,
you know, oo, oh

:-)

ring cycle 2

the promise, the appeal, rather than to be
the end user of a manufacturing process -
you are a runner in a relay, passing beauty
down the track towards a finish that will be reached -
again and again and again,

all in the course of a ring.

"Smoking 'til the ship comes in" (Or, "Last year's mantra, Revision No.4")

Lord, if I could get one wish I want to be your will for me on earth.

Lord, if I could get one more I want to be the best thing here, for her. But, lord

if I can't be that thing that I most want to be

for you,
just let me be whatever else I have to do

for I
am through

"rare note"

I am a poet of rare note. Like a bank note
that passed out of circulation obscure foreign governments ago,
and is known and prized, coveted jealously
by precisely six people - some of the most erudite, exclusive
and trivial numismatists in the world, except
that's coins, isn't it? In any case,
or pressed between pages, locked
in a safe, we poets of rare note
don't care so very much
about the difference between collectors.

controlling

I am in utter command

of my bowel movements.
I sleep at whim.
My erections
are inspirational, and voluntary.
Most people, they say, use 10 percent
of their brains. I use up to 20 percent, plus!

A whopping 60% of my own.

"Wild Time Museum"

She waits at the end of it all, the beginning
Sits fresh in her hands.
She lives where it ends
She knows where it ends
Exhibits stretch out in wings
to each side, the past
can't abide, the future
can't die; for the present,
pretend that it's wide open now
- That all of these clear, interlocking locked strands
don't somehow prevent everything but one end
to all this wild time

A load of towels.

These things, when they're done
we can hang them out
and they'll dry in the air
but you know, for now -
they are clean, sopping wet
and perfect for this:
let's each choose our towel,
and we'll grab both ends,
and we'll give ten twists
'til the water wrings out and the tension snakes through,
and somebody's bare ass
is about to get whipped!

and I say it is going to be you.

You've a difference of opinion
on that score, though. And
we're not keeping score -
you're ahead, I know,
but it's all in fun! Or
at least, in play.
'Cause that's how we do that
every laundry day
all our clothes have been used up
anyhow, so we might as well
do it all in one swoop!

- but we'll do the towels
first. Always - always.
That's the method that works
each laundry day through.

If you do

Oh, and wtf do you mean "if"?
Let's not be disingenuous, here. Unless
we can be disingenues, of course
- We'll dress up in ironic gowns,
and waltz widdershins through
our own personal anti-cotillion,
which other people mistakenly refer to as
"the world and everything in it."

Save a dance for me, if you wish.
I've already begun, any time

you care to begin it.

inside that guy's head

got an arm off
wheelchair
eyes averted
used to it
flowing
accident
legs
youthful
dyed hair

both hands
standing
stroller

just so you know
we're going to be having sex later
in my imagination

Dear,

Dear,

Nothing in life works or works out
as intended. This
is no indictment of life. It is
an indictment of intent.
Intentionality is no joke - cosmic
or otherwise, it is in deadly grim earnest an attempt
to meet reality more than half-way to our plan,
to our dreams, when

all our lives,
we know and see where
it really lies. We win, the day
we stop daunting life.

The day we give up - not dreams,
but dreaming. We will wake up,
on our own terms, and we will find

they apply.

Until that day, and every day,
we will die.

Which is not really so bad. These little deaths
kill nothing

but the life we never had.

Amusing.

Bad impulses should be cherished
as education, entertainment.
You should hang way back, detached
and laugh,
at the deliciously stupid act
that you are not fucking about

to do.

Some things you will never have

to take back

are more precious than things
that you will
have
to.

safe word(s)

Discipline and restraint - not much to choose
between
these two virtues.

Are you trying to be so mean? I didn't think
you had it in you, at least
not for me

but I guess this is the role
you want to play. It's

not for me,

but baby what ever turns you on
that doesn't kill me, only
makes you strong - and

we need you strong.

I will hold out, until
you can't go

any longer this way.

At least I always know
what to say, if I have
to say, so

be that way.

a quart of gin.

a false regret
over all the things that can never happen
because time is set.

Time, one thing
that has happened at once, from start to end,
and is constantly done.

So there is no use
to regret, dear one. Don't fret, there is
only one way, and it

goes on

"Check!"

I like a woman with a young ass;
a grown-up mind;
an adult sensibility -
in all that that entails;
ancient, wise eyes,
and shining behind them,
a soul that was bought
brand new, driven off the lot
at some point (instantly losing
half its book value, they say, but
what they know is a lot) plenty of
miles now and some bad, but all
one owner, all good, running smooth,
sweet and humming, all original parts
combining in some sum whole
you could just about fit
your whole life into,

or at least you would want so much
to have fun trying, and die
while you're at it.

dangers of multiple choice

One time,
I was offered three things
and I opted
to take first the one,
second the other,
and then,
later when the person was like, hey,
what about the third?
I was like,
I'll just have another of the second!
- if it's all the same to you,

But it wasn't

alarm

what woke me was
a slowly-dawning
sense of foreboding, growing
into an increasingly-specific uneasiness
over a far-fetched but threatening presentiment.

balance

I have half
the necessary time involved, and double the
don't gives a shit.