the unspoken innocent question

Would you believe me if I told you
I was lying? If I told you
everything I ever told you
had been calculated to hurt you
when you found out?
When you found out,
what would be the very first thing
you'd shout? Have you found out?

Would you believe me if I told you
I was wrong? That I'm always
wrong. It's just how I am
That everything done, was on some
level wrong. That when you found out
you could call me on. When you
found out.

Have you found out?

strict regimen

I dined
upon a lunch of conundrums,
even though it was only
breakfast-time.
2 AM
And everywhere else,
the sun shown down at all angles
at once,
or else had descended again
to hell,
to rise again,
once all could be well.
It was becoming fine

as I filled myself up,
I knew the emptiness was good
for something,
at least.
I couldn't tell
what would come as the day
went wild, unleashed
and I want to meet
it with bared teeth
and fists, and sharpened wits.
So I eat conundrums and shit
question marks. And

that's about it.

certain degrees

By certain degrees
- which means they are measured
in metrics accepted all over the world,
considerably more than 360 round,
I know you're my girl.

He Who

As long as I have impunity,
there isn't a thing you can do to me -
but if I should slip into your grasp,
I shall laugh and slip free,
and walk on my way,
and okay, one last
laugh.

procrastinist manifesto (unfinished draft)

Without urgency, procrastination tends
to drag its feet a bit, always plenty
of things along the way not being walked
as we linger, having already made our

decision.

YES. This must be done. Looking at it
though, no. It doesn't look done. It must

not be done

yet
time

Will tell how it all turns out,
wisely or well, unless

we die in time.

We who procrastinate best
expect long legacies, of things

very much worth doing, to fill
others' lives with purpose, and

ours are already full, aren't they?

Too full.

Precautionary

When you set something down, and
start to turn, step away
double-take - turning back
with a hitch as you go, arm
out straight back at it
and point!

Stay there.

You don't say it.

The gesture is
unmisinterpretable,
anyway come on

It's an object. An
inanimate object, it
isn't a pet or a baby

did you set it down
on an unsteady surface? What
was the purpose? Are all your
surfaces too full, can't you just

no, that's no good. Set it down
on the floor, it gets tripped over,
stepped on, forgotten but - Look,

I realize you're just
stepping away for a minute

but as soon as you get back,

that thing will be gone.

Panera

Panera raisin bread is the bee's knees'
TITS, yo. All six of them, And yet

I'm not really sure if it's standout,
exemplary in the raisin bread category
- which ranges wide in texture, spice,
coherence ("holding together," in this
case - Panera's landing a dot below
the middle of the scale, separating
rather easily along the swirl, but
- not by itself! If you pull) but
two pieces just toasted, still hot
with an egg you just fried
applied between, it's

sublime and richly simple
and rudely, vulgarly, spurtily
hot and saltily sweet, limp
and helpless, the softness of a yolk
I would never throw off
but must wipe, every bite huge
as the thing diminishes

There we are now, all
tidy and clean. I feel
like an orgiast.

Eating a fried egg sandwich
is an art I will forever be stuck
at Primitivism with, stylistically. It
is made much less so

if you've overdone the thing.

editing autosoliloquy

that comma's a blemish
it isn't there, and should
be. I hate

missing things. Although I
rue all the more superfluity,
apart from the word being
so neat. Clutter

isn't the problem, it's
a trip hazard, an interruption
to a flow supereffortless, or

one would like it to be. But there need
to be rocks in the stream. Perfectionists
know what I'm talking about. Ask

one. They will tell you
I have the wrong idea about
perfectionism, and I do. They have known
perfect things, made none, but
it's a matter of time only
'til they chuck it in. So wrong,
my idea. I apply it to them, too

which is just unjust. I should know
better, but then - and only then -

I would be perfect.

"The absurdist."

You cannot be truly absurd, if
you are an absurdist. The intellectual
distance and fondling fondness, the
delight in it distances, as
distance does. And you say
you delight in it, but isn't
your delight really over? It
soon will be, you see you were never
absurd enough yourself. Oh you were,
like all of us, but you saw the point

and congratulating yourself,
you've lost it. In finding
the plot, the warp and weft,
the pitch and yaw, the

yawn. Is all you've got, so
you titillate yourself
with such absurdities
as you find, or find
time to make, remember
good times. A subpar
brand, you've burnt into
your arm. You delight
over it. You are separate
from and superior to, and so

tethered to it by unbreakable knot,
you are safe to and from harm
as you huff, and you puff, and you blow

on the chimes.

vertigoer

to descend by means
of feet and ropes,
repelling yourself
from the face of a cliff
or a building, as if
you had too-high hopes
and lowering down
was your only wish

hung in suspense
that keeps letting go

with surest grip
you can squeeze and release,
and catch and loose
and land and push off
you could do this all day

it's a long way down,
at least

mystery time

Sometimes you have to reenact the crime
to figure out what laws were broken

Sometimes playing back the conversation
is the only way to piece together
what was left unspoken

Sometimes
all you do is dissect,
rationalize

And still it adds up to
a perfect score

Apart from all the lies
you tell yourself about
not wanting more.

"long-distance"

Cram it down my ear my love
Let us make the most of this
These brief debriefings that we snatch
from time and space
before we kiss

dispense with

I wish I could fill my whole water glass
in three seconds flat from a cold carafe.
Instead I must stand leaning in, by the fridge
where this thin snake of pulsating wetness lives

It will stream out cold, pure, naked and slow
and will not let up, for as long as I press
my whole water glass, still empty by half

while I try to get a poem out of it, at least
as the level will rise, as the pressure
stays on,

At last!

Shall I drink this fast? Or no

mercy beating

You have no idea how easy it is
to hold all the horrible things
in me back.

What you just said now? You just
set yourself up. I wish I were
half as nasty as that -

as I'd have to be, to let fly
with the line
I already see twining
garotte-like to catch

your throat, and pull taut
with guillotine force. Well
no one has ever deserved
quite so badly of me

as I'd have to be, to spring
so beautifully-wrought
and cruel a trap.

It practically beautifully
wrought itself. I don't think
I can credit myself, so
there.

Let us let this one go

- if it comes back to us,
in a way I can use
without feeling so bad
about you, poor dear
excuse,
we shall take

such pains and care.

my best day

If all of my poems
were written on my best day,
they'd each be much better,
and effortlessly. And I
would have died, the

day after that. Having
wasted my best day

on such old hat.

missing out

Did you ever think you'd
spend your life? Yeah,
neither did I, I guess
we're right.

She says she misses her youth
these ol' days, she misses
specific years and ways

Well I don't. But maybe
if you'd been around,
then I would. It sounds
like you've always been up
to something good, but

The only thing I miss
is how much I've been missing
out on you,
out on you. We've got

some catching up to do.
I'm sick of missing out on you.

"enough to pretend"

I haven't enough
to pretend
with now. I used

to have rooms of boxes
and shelves

of painted wood
shapes,

notched logs, bright
plastic blocks with pegs,

long rods
and circular, many-holed
gears,

articulated die-cast metal
and molded plastic
fears
in jointed shapes
all jumbled and left
disordered from least
to best, removed
from their roles,
still colored and posed
as soldiers, reporters,
doctors and apes,
wizards and scientists,
demigods, blessed saints
and beasts, women
and men. And now

they've all flown
or been sold,
or broken and scuffed,
scratched from life, with
a limb or two off,
thrown out.

There's a page,
an endless idea
and an empty pen, set aside
inside an entire room
for doubt.

Enforcement Art

The Enforcement Arm
of the Better Business Bureau
operates completely outside
the Constitution, and cannot even
be admitted to exist. By Law, Enterprise

must remain Free. But there is one man,
me. When they rip you off, and you call it in
to the BBB, when no one else can help,

sometimes, if it's that kind of case,

they tip me off. They call me

in.

And I case the joint
and a plan comes together
which I execute

to their sudden, instant
and everlasting woe

If it gets in the News, it will say
Oh well, they had to go. People like that

have no business, clearly
on the face of the Earth,
not when I'm around
with my world of hurt
to wipe off that damn smirk
they had on their face
when they started
smarting off, telling you
you'd been had, and
there's no recourse
for you in this place.

Not too smart, as it turns
out, and wrong as well.

I have no remorse. Where was theirs?
When they refused to honor your coupon?
Which was clearly good! They chose

their own course. And you did well
to call it in to the Bureau, ma'am.

Consider your coupon
honored in death and blood. We all do

the best that we can.

yet, two

I love the two meanings of
yet. One is just 'but,' but
the other implies something

coming down the rails of time,

to arrive - not yet, yet
soon, perhaps. A sense

of inevitability, yet
- no one's actually promised
you anything

Yet

Yet.

What kind of people
are we to understand
have told us, done to us
such things as can never
be taken back, made up for
and yet, expect forgiveness?

Don't answer that. Yet

nake

I want to nake you from your clothes,
and find out where your beauty goes
and what it does, and what it's for
- I don't expect to understand. I don't
expect to learn much more

login

My fingertips bounce
and dance around in steps
they've danced so carelessly
before, with mind intent
on thought of what passed
through
my mind to bring me here, what more
I'll do with it, as soon as I get

past this screen. But then
my mind got lost in dance; the
passwords I come up with are
so cute! I constantly and
consciously refrain

from saying them aloud
to give away the game, but
each and every one's a character
of sorts, a little dork

with a name. Shoot. I got
distracted, fond and lost
my place, appreciating. As

I should! As they deserve, but

now, it's hard
recalling why
I came.

the peace of nature

I have a lot of respect for nature,
it's huge. Enormous. A chaos
of order, and we find our place
in it quite

strange. As if
the whole thing was
for us, and we want

something else. What if
it isn't just for us?
What if
we act like animals?
And tear ourselves

and it
to bits.

"The bird at night"

The bird at night
must sleep somewhere
- we'll never know,
unless we hire men
(and girls, of course
- this day and age!)
to track and follow them.
To catch, release with
things attached. They're
probably infesting trees,
out in the wild - it's home
to them, and

they don't even mind the breeze,
the rain, somehow. Let's steal
a page. Somewhere and silently
right now,

they're sound asleep.
Whatever shelter nature
gives,

they rest in it 'til morning
light. We've got to find out how
they live.

rationalizations

I can't believe all the veins you've got
inside you. I mean,
I don't know but I'm forced
to suppose. I never should've watched
those surgery shows. Organs
and muscles and tendons
and blood all through,

it gets everywhere
it's allowed to go

and somehow it makes
up you.

Such realizations

are starkly at odds

with impressions I've gleaned
from your oohs and ahs
and your sage insights,
and your satisfactions.

Your impulsive remarks,
surprising reactions
- your tells and shows.

The feeling in you, how
it ebbs and flows
through the webs and the nets
and tissues and flesh
and blood and skin
and makeup and clothes

as all of it breathes
and feels, and glows.
I believe

I sound like a psychopath!
I shouldn't have watched
those surgery shows.

I never do think of you
clinically. It doesn't add up

to all you begin to be,
or begin to explain
why you're into me,

considering all of my guts
and veins and blood
and brains

in this symphony, we
together conduct
in sympathy.

false recovery

Childhood recipe
half-remembered,
except the effect
so clearly held.
You begin in mind
to focus and stretch,
identify, reconstruct

the spell. Ingredients
only a part of this.
The order of steps, the
proportions you give

generous, now parsimonious
then, review the result

of the time you spend. It
isn't the same, but it will be
though. You'll gather around
a crowd so close, and reveal
to them what went into you

to make you so bitter, and sweet
and salt, just like they'll always

remember you, whenever they celebrate
or rue.

Veritical leap

When truth exceeds your reaching grasp,
a leap or two may bring it down
and you, with it
upon firm ground.
Or scrambling up from on your ass
with wild, searching looks to see
if anyone's around,
and saw.
It's not as if, but more as seems
- what you caught in your hand
remains - but every aspect
you perceived has flown, now
and forever changed
by seizing it. And knowing this,
the truth you wished to know

is all.

It all seems small
and strange,
and unworthwhile. Until
you reach, and grasp
and miss

again.

And so, you'll gather up
yourself - another daring lunge

you'll undertake because you must,
but can't help feeling self-accused
somehow

it's only just
to entertain.

Specifically You

There is all of the world,
and specifically you. I don't use
the latter you lightly. I prefer
on the whole to indefinite use,

leaving you free to seize what applies

- which was always meant to.

my vaunted purity of heart

I think it's that
I so long ago embraced
all the well-known nastiness within me
and reduced it to a series of toys

a line of action figures
produced in connection with some
particularly-despicable cartoon

one catches my eye now and then
and I'll grab it with a bunch of the others
and knock around with them a bit,

keenly conscious

of the childishness, which it is. In
the full flowing stream of life, though

I've utterly detached the sexual sadism
I never actually had
but had heard about, and it sounded like
people not kidding. So I thought

jeepers

that must be something in humanity
and I am one! So I added it forthwith
to my collection of action figures

and it beat up and fucked all the other
neglected toys quite handily. It was painful to see
yet oddly satisfying. Now I get it! I cried

and promptly detached it from more virtuous
urges of lust and devotion, clean
and wholesome

and it's been quite ridiculous ever since. Purity
is achieved in a kiln, a crucible

where impurities are burned away, leaving
that taste. And the ore that went in
is not what comes out. It is

refined, somehow. Into

pure what?

Let's find out! Chuck another lump of ore
in, while we bang and shape this red-hot stuff

into cups, swords and spades -
tools, playthings and such.

There is much need
for such hot, sweaty work
as we all draw forth
what we are from this earth.

"Role Play"

Pretend I am naked and vulnerable, and
my armour's gone off on a quest of its own -
leaving us here, with holy grail
undefended and closeted, safe at home.

each other's pets

I seem to indulge in emotional
heavy petting, quite unintentionally
if not by accident. I enjoy it, you see.
It's pleasurable to stroke a truly
deserving sense of self, like

a good dog!

I don't mean people are dogs, but
you know they just want love. Like
dogs, and I love to give emotional
pets and scratches. It is the law.

If good is its own reward, and it is,
surely to recognize it and reward it
even more is to participate in its
goodness! And if some poor being,

poor thing, is sad, well fuck. It
doesn't take much to restore sense,
connection and well-regard, now

does it? It is its own reward. It goes
beyond need, really. To give what you
don't need yourself at the moment. It fills
some need you didn't have a moment ago.

Until someone did, or maybe they didn't
but away we go. Who thinks of these
things? You just reach out to a being
that pleases you, and you pet, stroke
and hug, and it pleases you. It pleases

them, too. Well, depending on how
you do. We really are

each other's pets, without any loss
to dignity. Each other's favorites, so let's

just lose ourselves this shamelessly.

blessed bits

Our worth to all the universe
is surely less
than yours to me. Alone,
we make significance

that all the stars will never see,
as beautiful as we find them.

Their brute and shining ignorance
is bliss to us, and lights our way

but soft, across each other's
symmetry

vague riots

Vague riots, casually erupting
without cause, or maybe
too many causes. No one knows
but we're all here, and maybe

that's the cause. We shouldn't
have come out without cause. We're

vulnerable out here, all massed
and moving as one, somehow.
looking for cues to follow,
and with monstrous strength failing
to find them. Milling about

nothing, angry and growing
confused and almost spent

from the broken panes, glass
scattered, cars tipped over,
bodies moaning and eyes open
wide half-glazed, every sense alert

in latent panic, ready
to break, to charge, to
bide our time and circulate

and meanwhile, wait
for our scattering strength
to gather again.

defiant sense

Hydroplane should be
some kind of flying boat, obviously and
why would a basket even need
a case? An enclosing container
for an open-topped one? If anything
the reverse might be useful: a nice big
basket
for you to keep all your cases in, but
that would be a "case basket." You can't
eat your cake
and have it true, but the reverse is untrue!
You can have your cake, and then eat
the thing. The usual order of things,
in fact - have! Yes, good. Then: eat!
You can only eat what you have. Then
you can't anymore, you don't have any
more. But worse
than that

I forgot
why I started
on this track. It wasn't
the points I made above, I was working my
way towards something, way up higher
than that, I just thought a foundation laid

would be a good tack to take, first

to make a case. Make it, click it
Stick it in the basket, I guess. It'll come up
later, like a boat to air

once it's built speed up
from hydroplaning to aerodynamism
an ever-accelerated and rising

death trap

Take weapons

Take weapons and break them
over, upon and through you
until they are tested and
proved and ruined and true,

and then you won't need
them again, you won't need them
again.

Take weapons of others'
attempted misuse, wrest
deftly from hands, turned

wrong-way 'round again
they won't need them again, oh no
not again, and then

use all of your new-found acumen

to conceive in a flash and
realize in pain. Make weapons

you will never need
again, just art for art's sake
martial or marital arts, we all need

a hobby or three, a hobby or three but

keep your weapons away from me.

I will show you how wrongly you've used
all I've said, all my weakest

points and blunt force
wounds, you see

it may well have been feint
or subterfuge, to draw you in

range
of everything I saw in you.
Take everything you see

and flee.

And don't come back. It's okay, we both
did our worst
and failed. An honorable combat, let's
pretend. Taking one

last look at the vicious thing

in my hand, I know.
I know I will never need
one of these again

precautions, against the inevitable

Figuring everything's inevitable is a lot
easier than taking precautions. You can't
take precautions anyway, not without

going around in a bad mindset
looking for trouble, it can
hardly be worth it sometimes,
and I've tried. A time or two!

I kept forgetting, so anyway
I don't really figure
everything's inevitable. But

pretending's a hell of a lot
easier than figuring out how to adopt
the kind of shitty outlook
precautions take. You need
to spot
the need, the risk
and implement them

precautions.

A pain. And
what if everything's
inevitable?

Nothing Real

I been crying
you couldn't tell
But you miss nothing
it's just as well

it was only a movie a song or some
other depiction of life
gone wrong, probably

You pull no punches
and so do I
We're trading lunches
and alibis
it's only emotion and soul that's
between us so deep in and out
of control

it's nothing real
oh no, no.
It's nothing real,
no, no, no,
it's nothing real -
Oh no no, it's nothing
it's nothing
it's nothing really, though

'Cause deep inside me
way down and hid
it's nothing, really
I vomited

it was only emotion and soul and
between us those things
don't exist, you know

it's nothing real
oh no, no.
It's nothing real,
no, no, no,
it's nothing real -
Oh no no, it's nothing
it's nothing
it's nothing really, though

this was only a movie a song
or some other depiction of life
gone wrong,

it wasn't real

emblematic

I'm typically fully-engrossed in life
and I've never been bored in the fucking world
since assuming there's not way too much going on
there's a backlog of thought and experience yet
to be processed and furled. I make banners
and flags out of them. Comes in handy

for backdrop and atmosphere. Let them curtain
and fall, and rise and fly

'til the speeches are finished
and dances are done, and a good time

was had by all.

Butterfly Effect

Man, when I
see a butterfly, it’s like
I get lost in its world, its
butterfly’s-eyes view as it flutters, lands
on a drawn blade of autumn grass, wings
pulled up in rest position, and

you can finally see its pattern

a mosaic of microscopically iridescent scales,
standing aglow in light as if light
were the air that uplifts it
When the butterfly lands

I am back in my body, just agawk.
When the butterfly takes off, my feet
leave the ground or
the Earth drops away and I
am back out of my body, aflutter. Can I just stop

a sec and inject an aside? My kidnapped
-and-raised-by-butterflies awe
of these fellows is a joke.

It’s a fucking bug.
But if it’s a joke to others, I have
no doubt it should be, but I am completely full
of and fooled by it. No deliberate fool,
but a willing one.

So this one time,
one landed on me.

I can’t even describe
how motionless I was in that moment,
or how long it held me. In memory

I am sure I did not even breathe.

The air began just circulating
by cool breeze in and through my lungs,
and out by warm, wet zephyr, like a draft
through a house, except
keeping me alive.

That butterfly landing saved my life.

I didn’t freeze when it landed - on my hand!!
- which was held out in front of me lazily,
for no reason, like some super-aloof falconer
- I wasn’t frozen, wasn’t paralyzed, just

motionless.

Like a stone in the sun,
and perfectly unconsciously
comfortable as that stone,
as the moment drew on
unnoticed.

The passing of time,
I mean, was unnoticed.
The moment simply held,

as if all the world
were sufficient within it. Why
are you here, dude? Thanks for landing.

I welcome you. I would not slide a pin
through you for anything.

And I must have begun zoning out, because
I noticed it had lifted off, it was already
about a handsbreadth from my hand and then gone
- off through the air. Making a curly-swirly
dotted line behind it in my mind. But I didn’t

actually see it lift off,
to cover that first bit of distance. It must’ve

been a persistence-of-vision trick, how you
stare for so long at one spot
that your eyes begin to absorb
and balance out all the surrounding
world into background pattern, and any
little shift your gaze makes
sends shivers and flashes through the whole thing.
It corrects
quickly once you follow
a moving object on. Its wings

while it lit

were a sort of straw-spun gold, mottled
with dull gold splotches. Its body
was perfectly assured, perched for a rest
on this odd, safe place of mine - which

I normally use for purposes
that would confuse our insect friend.

It flew off. Back on its course
towards and past and crossing behind
a tree my mind tells me was hickory now,
mid-sized, nothing ostentatious. Its leaves yellow,
green, or yellow-green

so it must’ve been winter. California.
I didn’t follow. I never do.
But that one event’s impact and
consequences rippled and permeated
all through the next days, and as they reached
to weeks and further, recurring regularly
in decreasingly returning waves
with increasingly-wider troughs. Even

now, there’s an unbroken motionless moment
within me, every time it comes back. The same
unbroken motionless moment. I guess

it’s going in the background without me, when
I’m not in it! Don’t underestimate

the butterfly effect.

The movie version is
a confusing and unbelievable misrepresentation. A

mess. The real thing
is much more nuanced
and sublime, and I can’t
even conceive its pleasures
piling up or branching out

to catastrophe.

repertoire evaluation

Hey
what if I switched to say the bad
to worse and worst everyone always
accuses me of

only seeing the good in? Wow. They would
be so appalled at just how tippy-top
to floating foundational iceberg-bottom wrong
and adrift they've been

in this sea of truths of eyes and mouths
where supposedly I only have eyed

the good. As if! If only, I mean.
It would be a far better world than this
that I'd be able to miss
so much bad in. Just because praise

is the better part of criticism, you know
and good
is far more remarkable than bad, evil
and wrong. Huh

How have I never occurred to this? One twist

and I could be scathing. And as I've long known
from remarks in clipped-cut plummy tones
of arch observations bit back, savored
in the mouth and pertly swallowed, some
of that stuff I've never thought to say
- polished and whetted a bit, shaped for elegant
eviscerations and six-inch deep
papercuts - could be objectively hilarious!
Even if subjectively low, brutal and
cruel.

What's wrong with me, missing this out? Some people
don't even KNOW I'm a critic! And what

a critic. I mean, I mean it all.

Why only say half of it?

Sinister being one of my favorite
words anyway. Another (and to a much
more natural and great extent) being
arrogance. Sinister only means "left,"

after all - that's innocent. An old slander
against the left-handed, presumed
to be freaks and murderers - a tragically
self-fulfilling prophecy, alas! In too
many cases to count. On the other hand,

I rather tend to trust the excellence
of my courtesy and tact, long-honed
in the shining practice of the opposite
of what I'm contemplating. I bet

I could do such a good job savaging persons,
places and things that they'd be overjoyed
of it! Like my brother Jim, who

frankly

was the idol of my childhood and the hero
of my youth and presumably through
to dotage. Why did I never notice

this trick of his! Thought I was stuck
with my lopsided take. Never even noticed,
actually!

What a dope.

Well, anyway. That's another way to go.
Another arsenal in the repertoire, so
to speak, for use
as directed. Good
to have on board.

How am I going to keep it in mind,
though? I'll need

to think up some kind of clever
trigger
mnemonic
catchphrase.

At some point