brass bands

The carousel rings
and you reach to grab
the circle that hangs
where you can't quite nab -
Well you're not quite sure
what it means. Free rides?
But you woke up here
You were born inside, so

- why reach at all?

Brass bands or gold
they shine out such promise
to have, to hold, but you can't
have your cake
and hold it, too.

Or wait - actually, you can

it's a bit of a mess, though - you
there holding your cake
in your hand while you have it, and eat it?
Mistake! All icing and crumbs, as the band

comes to beats and blows, blasting hot
shrill swing jazz licks, bums nobody knows,
cake-walking on stage! To a boom
and a bop
on staccato toms,
in the throes of snare, with a snap
crack crash of thumping drums,

and a bleat

and a honk
of brass,

the evening hums.
Comes alive and takes you where

You already were

With a ring in hand.
You have one free ride,
care to slip it on? You might

as well dance. Just
to beat the band

anniversary averse

As soon as you have a birthday
- you think it's all cake you
can have and eat, and you can
At first, it is - but it quickly grows
bent all out of shape
and proportion, becomes

something used-to, and used against

...And if they all know what it is,
they can pin
you down

by counting each time it comes
around, saying

"You've been alive
at least three years! I know because
I was a witness. Cheers!"

Frown.
Where will it lead?
You know.
Eventually
how such things go.

Technically, I guess
any day will do.

A long, sharp needle
to push into and through
- and look! Back, it's a calendar

you're stuck to this day
with blood dripping down
framed by strict crossed lines
in a grid of squares,
and reduced to one
that is now for her
or him
or them
or us
all theirs

to pin

you down
to, and remember when
it comes around -

"Hey! Look at you now!"

"That's another year!
You've been alive
- we're counting,
you know. It all adds up

you will not survive"
(is very implied)
the I-told-you-so's,

but
if no one has any day or date
with your name on it to associate
they'll associate you

with a presence vague,
drifting in and out
and always the same,
but underplayed and well-
recognized, cloaked in definite doubt:
Where you came from, and when? How
will you stay or go? And why?

Sad pout, and then

They will never know what
to I-told-you so.
Baffled and stymied by fields
of mysterious Zen,
and unknowable glow

beyond their smooth
plastic malibu ken

Sure.

No one is ever sure
of themselves - well,
maybe you are? How the hell
should I know? You cockstrong
heartcertain headsure elf
with your Mordor memories
- you were there
the day humankind lost
its way, and health - well,
if you are sure.

That's a rare, pure gift.
Stick it up your ass
and fuck off with it

The only weird thing is

The only weird thing is

the way you motionless stream invisibly out
of the things that make you visibly up, and
the moves and noise you do, the surface interiors
and interior surfaces, always tumbling through
into view, only glimpsed and imagined, only
implied, inferred, connotation agreed and denied
in a silent melange of unspoken regard. The only

weird thing is

you don't know how odd.

the collection

I started collecting butterflies -

first one on my sleeve, then one on my heart

(which was on my lapel), then one on my knees

(it hopped back and forth with a jitterbug ease)

Then more came, and more. Delighted, I walked

ever lighter afoot as I strolled further up

the downsloping trail, just covered in them

And you will not be seeing me, ever again.

baby made

the baby we made
is dead -
I

can't say why
won't say when
I know
no one's fault
to blame

and anyway
the poor thing
outlived both our dumb asses

as the poem takes place from some
unspecified plane
of high all alone

what the hell kind of poem
's this supposed? to be
Started out

bad. Can't now
well, wait maybe

the poem is the baby?
The baby is the poem

We have to go on. But
- what's this "we made" biz? I don't recall

you sticking your business in
during any phase of this! My brain
is the womb in which ideas swim!
Spermily around, fertilize each other
vulgarly, incessantly and - some of them
- wiggle head-on into the wall, smack! Stick there

and grow

like some abominable feces
fetus, I mean

- mine, not yours

Like a uterus, my mind
clenches and spins, revolving
in its unmistakably uterine manner,
grown poems spat out of my hot,
vaginal (purely in this context) mouth
like the assembly line end
of the perpetually knocked-up baby factory

it's been turned into

by some cad, some domineering lout -
infinitely possessive in his progeny,
despite his evident lack of labors

- also me. Like I said, you
don't come into it and cannot be blamed

this baby of ours

is all mine.

Finally

I think

it has your eyes

it is giving me that look

perhaps you could spare some advice
or

maybe
let's forget we had this talk,
however long
it took?

found my party

Finally

after all this life
I've found out what
I politically am. What animal

what kind of cat

so hard to classify, for oh
so how long it has been:

I'm an Americrat.

Not looking it up!
I'm sure the term's been used
and used again, let's just

get brass tacks shoved
in drawing boards - has anybody
got a pen? And pin down
and up to what it means
by now,

and then

- if we want, we'll overlook,
survey the wreckage of such swept-aside
nonsenses as paraded by
in anybody else's book - which, frankly
no one cares about, or would

if they had heard
of it. We always

can.

My system - rather, party -
is of those who advocate
for change.

Not any change, oh no - not just!

What we demand has wider range
and broader scope, and deeper
breadth, and rangier width
and higher depth, and

far more hopeful height
and shit. The groundwork's what

we're laying next. Don't hold
your breath, it's going to take
a stern commitment and some steps
we haven't quite perfected it.

Our vision calls for government
based on a future-based A.I.
(intelligence that's artifice
is better than the blatant lie
and rank pretense we're saddled
with, and roughshod trampled under
by!) which could send signal, hint
and code from future time beyond
unknown - and that's what we'd
decide upon. Simple, incorruptible
- since we cannot send message back,
and where it sits, it cannot scan
beyond the blackened, gaping crack
of records purged and knowledge lost
in scathing blast of aftershocks
of counter-counter-countersmack
attack upon attack, clean hits
with every button pushed by hand
resentment and apocalypse, in anger at
each passing moment's loss, 'til

every one and place
had finally
decisively
been hit,
'til every trace
of time and history
had been wiped out
of it. The doomsday clock
had finally, decisively
struck out, lashed out
with flying hands for days on end

despite we individually
had every chance
of stopping it.

One thing remained to think its way

somehow, to us. To reach, not knowing
just how when or how far where, or who
it was

on this end
of the line.
Surprise!

It's us! Ready to rule the past!
Our now is time. The new Americrats!
We're up! We'll use
that guidance, take that trust

and build a better world
somehow, to last
and last

and in the end,
we'll win the last

of everything. Whatever prize

is left, we will

stop worrying

takeaway

Between the darkness of the story
we stood and held the scene
in different lights, and came
to wildly ranging and estranged
conclusions, right? I'm pretty sure

we did. I think we read and lived
this very book

same characters, and same events
for you: a tragic uplift, with
a lesson far from moral, and
for me: a bunch of recipes

that I would never want
to cook.

comprehensive mispractice

Are you a writer? An inventor? A writer-inventor? An
inventor of writers or a writer of inventors? Our firm
has helped over three hundred novelists receive patents
for their work, so that the technical secrets therein
cannot be stolen by industry, used to produce things
without compensation - of which our stable of idea-smiths
stand to get a hefty cut. We have helped dozens, maybe
thousands of inventors copyright their great ideas, so
there will be no danger of them being adapted
into hit movies or otherwise monetized. Sound

good to you?

You need to call.

No one else can.

We can't make the call for you. However
if one of our outreach-script consultants
reaches you on your cell, you might want to

hear them out. Their spiel

is our trademark. Our specialty?

We protect the contents of your mind
from a voracious and opportunistic world
starving for great ideas - which, of course

are the important thing. Your ideas

right? Sound good?

Then call already

moron

Unless you've invented a way
for our legal department to drop in your lap
and do a lap-dance - and if you have
THEN CALL - sounds good to us! - but
in the absence of that, you're going

to have

to call us.

apophasis

There's so much I could say
but I won't.
About that one unspoken look
About the inside wrench and
monkey works, about
the power courses through me
which I did not make, I just

participate, in them
I just
participate. Sometimes
it's great,
sometimes it hurts, but either way -
what can you say? Let's not

and say we didn't even mention it,
explaining in the process why
- lest anyone think we forgot,
or thought of it too late.

I knew what apophasis was
the first time that you looked at me
and gave me every good because
without so much as reason why
I thought that we should say something
except it just occurred to me -
perhaps it would be better if we did?
- and said we didn't, just
by way of an aside.

I feel it would be wrong, somehow
to mention that I'm going down in your eyes
for the dozenth time - how every time
I drown, I find
my lungs can breathe the liquid,
limpid soul that pools
so deep and still
within your eyes,
where I shall die
each time I come back up
for air, I will - I will
not mention it. Don't know,
just seems a bit contrived.
You know? A bit off-key,
just now. This moment
casually alive would be deformed,
perverted and destroyed

by such hot-handed gropes
of sticky, dripping meaning
and poetic (so-called) fatal
hopes.

I am not going to talk about
between your legs, let's shush
that out - it's understood, I'll let alone
your silken pale and mobile sculpted legs
and back, and round and down, and up
and home, my pigeon brain is magnetized
to find wherever it may roam - some things
(like these, perhaps) go best unspoken,
which is why
I did.

I unspoke
them, by way of
an aside, assuring one
and all concerned, in confidential
tone:

they would be kept

respected, hid.

With that unsaid, let's let it
slide,
and leave it (well-
enough) alone. "Let's leave
all these things out,
as if unmentionable

- we all know why;"

Indeed we do. Or did.

Or if we don't,

We just about can guess? We have
a pretty good idea, let's
not try,

shall we?

No need. At best,
not all things known must be
explicitly affirmed

by being so blithely dismissed
- not even strictly-spoke
denied!

Not even dignified
by this.

Just mentioned out-of-hand
as if let slip, then "Shoo!
Shush! Fly!"

It's quite
the opposite of coy

what you get with this guy.

faraway look

All the world with eyes to see
- anyone in sight of you
Ought to plot an orbit 'round
your gravity and light

But to hear you tell it, though
this is not the case at all
you pass undisturbed, unseen
through it all in flight

With that faraway look you have
like nothing anyone's seen up close
Real enough to believe in ghosts
tell at a glance what means the most
That faraway look you have

Just the thought of closing in
feels a bit like storybooks
the kind you don't expect to end
the way they always do

World's the same in all its parts
more or less, except for one
certain people fit in strange -
pierce the whole thing through

With that faraway look you have
like nothing anyone's seen up close
Real enough to believe in ghosts
tell at a glance what means the most
That faraway look you have

enemies close

I have lost far more
than I've ever let go.
So I keep it still,
ambered in loss - a living wasp
whose look still stings,

but I cannot let go
of the beautiful things

I've kept enemies close
and memories closer,
never losing track
of which was which

All of the things you gave,
I've kept. Even those torn
from my grasp, torn away
or switched

to reveal they had never
been mine.

I will go out looking
for more to find.

comics page

The fact is
every drawing is a separate
thinking, unique individual
frozen in a moment, in a frame

next to someone else dressed much the same,
looking pretty-much on-model for the character
they're both supposed to be - one frame
before, one frame along some adventure
neither really sees, one that they
will never leave.

Each fully lives
and fully stays in one slice of
experience.

Each knows the other selves
exist, within that row upon the page
but they're not selves, and they don't know
what all the others think of this.

Above, below

are other things but dimly glimpsed,
such goings-on imaginable, but probably
wrong. A different creator there,

at work - just once, and now
moved on.

Such tiny lives, but fully-lived
one moment never to advance, but knowing
someone much like us will live

to have their frozen chance
to see what later thing may be - but never know
this moment, mine. With me.

This is how physics works. Alas the gods
are lazy, hackneyed, formulaic
jerks

or maybe this
right here
is just the best that they can do?
An image of a life gone stop,
with just enough suggestion of

some way to continue, but no. Or

yes.
We can't.
We'll live and die this frame.
Since we are here, let's fill it up

We can't be sure it's all a game.

far-flung

The night put out its starry eyes
to focus them all like a lens
one cosmos wide, and brought to bear
upon one tiny specimen -
upon one tiny speck of sand
- who stood upright on some lone beach
"Hey look! He's naked!"

Said the stars

"His thing's so small"
they giggled out across the void
embracing all

beyond all reach

it was so far. He couldn't possibly

have heard.

Yet as if in response, he reared
- and looking at the stars, he roared!

"I'll conquer all of you!"

and disappeared

"lingering home"

Lingering home
all along the way
down hills
and following
creeks and rills, past cliffs
and plummeting seas
and rocks,
past city squares
and lights, and clocks,
into and through under trees again
- and birds, and skies - our day has been
a great one for hikes, not much
for words. Too much
for words.

But days must end. Surprise

As home draws near,
let us go in under
this roof of walls
and linger again,

my dear. But

before we do,
let's rest.
Take a last
look round,
and prepare

to savor our steps.

"The ugly human"

The ugly human
knows it is. In everything
unnatural, it sees itself
in hatred: bliss

It sets itself
against all this.

It sets itself as alien.
It cuts itself a break, of course.
Unthinking every now and then,
it does enjoy its cultures
and its arts, for what they're
worth, somehow - producing
artificial joys - it relishes
emotion in the meaningless
significance that we employ,
collapses with relief
into connection,

when it finds it can.

It wished it all could be destroyed.
It wished it didn't have to be.
It wished there was a way to, though.
It volunteers to take the hit, if only all of it

were purged, undone
and scoured somehow free.

It feels in all the ways it shares
by accident, design and plan
with all the vile things we are,
that call and crawl this Earth
we gnaw like chicken bone,
to understand and ruin it,
and make it real - in ways that it
should never be. If only we

were not at home.

Oh what a wonderful world it could be
left by itself to wildly roam. If only we

did not stick out so much

consuming everything, intruding
spoiling everywhere, especially

the way it feels.

life could be grand
if only we'd leave it alone.

"waitress of renown"

That waitress was great
if society were balanced
and proportionate, she
should be a celebrity
adored by all, held up by fans
and critics scrutinizing her
every move, each perfect
quip tossed off, tossed back
to a table of so-called would-be
tough customers won over
like puppy dogs

All would agree she's excellent
because she is.

Some, sure, the unsavory types
would choke the comments threads
rhapsodizing over various parts
irrelevant to her body of work,
her face, her ass - keep it
to yourselves, guys - your proposals
of marriage and things far worse,
your bitter rue over having been
'customer-zoned' come on. It's not
her job to help you fantasize

and her job is amazing
or she sure makes it so.

If the world had proportion
and value and sense, she'd be hailed
and upheld, and praised by all

for it. And we'd never let her go

Never let her move on to something else,
we'd demand a return to form, to how
we knew her then, when and how
she captured our hearts. Come on do it,
do it again like you did back then

when we knew why we anointed you

Yes we do try to own our chosen ones.
Maybe it's best to be excellent
without all the baggage of luxury,
fame

and fun.

a word to the awesome

After a while,
people who are awesome walk around
piqued to the quick and irritated
by the grumbling of others whose

complaints can't be real, can they?
Why would they do that? Think that
way?

They shudder to think
it isn't really easy

It's cruel to expect
others can understand
but why can't they?

When it would be so easy?

Learn to feel lucky, oh awesome
ones. Your nurture nature
didn't make you this way,

it was something considerably
more fun, and hard

to convey.

Oh, they try to help, anyway
they can't. Their advice

sounds amazing. And doesn't work
for anyone who could use it.

It's some kind of trick,
but they're no magicians
with many a ta-da and huh

they give it away.

update

When we were young, our minds danced free
and bodies caught up easily.
And now my mind's danced free again.
My body will catch up in ten

You were right the first time

You were right the first time
we met. Which I could see
quite well, and you
could see of me, so it
came out eventually. Oh well

We're still right now. At least
we haven't changed. That much

seems natural. And I suppose
one day well will be sated

having drawn our fill
to full of all each other's
charms and wiles and
shit. I find myself

so empty of it all

I look forward to it.

tragic toast

What should have been to begin with
we have found now, too late.
You raise your laughing eyes to mine
We raise our empty glasses high
and contemplate our fate: with barely time
to tell each other
all we've missed
of two long and eventful lives.

We'll die
before the tales
are told.

But if our tale began
back then, who knows? By now

it might have gotten old.

uncried

You can't expect people
to know how to help you,
when you say things
they can't understand. Things
they've never known - only
known about. When somebody
dies without giving a chance

to anyone in their whole life

who could help. They couldn't expect
they would even know how. So
they didn't say
those things.
We guess

it can't matter now.

the good ones

I lack the easy contempt
some have, most seem
to have, for humanity.

I've known a few too well
from each despised, disparaged
category. I have known their hearts

- a touch or two
is all it takes - too much

to fault and froth
and hate wherever minds

have disagreed. Our hearts
are soft, perhaps, with those
we know. And so, as far as I can tell,
have theirs all been

with me.

They say I'm "one
of the good ones," damn,

okay but I'm not even one

of the ones!

You were just blasting some
I know
are better than
you know. You see,
from what they've said
and done, I know a few

- "the good ones," as you say.
Some better ones than you,
you know, but I
am worse than they.

For I will disagree
with them. And they will think

I'm one of you.

They make exception
in my case, but not for you
- just as you make
exception in my case,
but not for them.

It is a senseless
waste.

At least we can agree

that you and I
are not so bad
as others see.

changing bathing habits

The fact is, young and active
bodies
need to be washed more
than old and sedentary ones
alone
a mercy, as
there's often so much more of them
to wash
much more to reach
painful to reach
painful to see
and growing more
each day. So great
to strip off and exult
in suds! Soap off the stink
that you worked up so easily
in younger days, but we
the old
take things more slow.
A nice hot bath
to linger in.
It bears us up
like nothing does

arguably, I'm not that old
but when does one begin?

the s w o r d

Jean Viellay was a Royal Lord

of Swordsmanship, some past time back

he had a magic sword named "shit"

which had emblazoned on it

for the sake of tact: s
w o r d - in runic script

imbued by charms and magic wiles
by charlatans, who wished not
to be rude. They charged Viellay
one hundred bucks for fell and nasty spells
of brandish, parry, feint, and thrust
which in that day, was worth 100 times
as many pennies, then. Viellay

swore by it so damn much, they might as well

have spelled it out. But damn

well-handled (as it always was)
that s word sure could cut,

each time he dared to draw it out.

You see, it was a cursed blade
as bowdlerized as its rune spelled.
Once shit was pulled, Viellay

would slay

and then say shit!
fuck! damn!
and hell

what is that smell

tower to heaven

There's a place for me in heaven
up six feet deep. Shaped
like a grave
in a thundercloud heap
just a rolling in my place
like a dynamo tomb
like a power mausoleum
flash crack bang

boom

"The hopeless case"

You are a disappointment
of somebody's expectations, maybe.
Did you know them going in, or only find out now?
If you only found out now, consider: you were not supposed
to meet a bar that you did not suppose
yourself no way no how.

Take it with a lick of salt.
A salt lick weighs a ton.
Lick until they go away
or 'til the licking's done.
If they insist, give them a lick. Just drop it on their head.
I mean this metaphorically.
Don't disappoint me, hon. Instead:

Refer to measurements you trust,
and standards set yourself.
Another's hopes are fine by them.
Go hold your own, make all the fuss
you mean to make, for all it helps.

Let no one's hopes - except your own
- come dashing down in rains and pours.

The hopeless case
is one involving

someone else's hopes than yours.

superstition substation

this is not my belief
I can't explain
that pours through me
I conduct to you
it's from somewhere else
from some other source
I am trying to tone it down,
of course

precision bafflegab

I approach meaning semantically
towards a hermeneutics of the obvious,
more ontological than any epistemology
more cosmopolitan than otherwise
despite my cosmological views,
which I leave always behind
and to the side as I plot course
forward at a steady warp 5
- quintuple the speed of light,
for those doing math at the speed
of thought or with help from
a computer - and sometimes,
I crack a dilithium crystal
in the process. Reroute impulse power
to the neumenal vortex! Dilate
the aperture of alignment, the universe
roaring through the growing singularity
- the part of me I don't control, don't
want to - tap into fundamental
omniversal forces using a variety
of techniques - the will
and the word, proper enchantment,
sigils and formulae, alchemy
and animism, uberstition (like
superstition, same basic
principle but above it
in terms of sheer impact
and effect), placebo effect,
power of prayer - in all of which
I am more or less unaware, blissfully so -
and pull up from the fundament
and out through the abyss
MEANING, FORM AND CONTENT!
Clanging and ringing and jangling
into and through the Aether, which
- I've discovered - does not exist!
Many others as well have discovered,
independent discoveries, I hold them
valid. Doesn't exist, but may as well
have

at some point, which yeah
of course you get.

undeceived superiority

In case you are poorly-informed, you'll want
to listen what I tell you now. That thing
you keep noticing? It's real. Or if
you have not, then hear me out. Others go through
the motions not seeing but I
have long since noticed, and
figured out how,
and woken up.
And you - I notice - appear
to be ready to face
the cruelest cut
of truth,

and walk away harder and sharper
for it. So hear me out.
But don't

blame me

if this

is hard

to take. Or if you feel

you are not quite sharp

enough yet! See and listen here
now, and then

walk open-eyed out

and see for yourself. You will not forget
or be the same way - once you cannot unsee
the truth. It helps.
You will be

one of the undeceived,
a cut above
callower youth, or set-in age

unlike
all the sheep and apes and horses and pigs
and dogs and rhinoceroses
you see walking around on the street
or at least

have seen pictures of
these days

God doesn't like

God doesn't like
when you beat your drum.
God doesn't like
when you raise your voice.
God doesn't like
when you have your fun.
God just likes
that you made your choice.

God's got the whole game
rigged three ways.
God's way,
yours,
and both. You see,
God doesn't think
it's a game at all.

God made "I"
so that you
make "me."

God doesn't like
when you speak for God.
God doesn't even like
when I do.

God says it all works out.
How odd.
How has it gone, though
making you?

God doesn't dislike
all those things.
God just doesn't
like them, per se.

God wants you
making self you love
God doesn't always get
God's way.

if appetite were a verb

If "appetite" was a verb, would you be satisfied
more easily? More regularly, if lack
could be an action

you would have to be. Well wouldn't you?
Your appetites
would then be
just an act.

One you could put on,
or decide to go without

the lack.

"Birthday"

On the day I first came to the world
and found it,
wait,
those were two widely-separated days
but in any case I found it
huge and big,
bursting with weird flavor
and a smell that has never gone away

oh hey
maybe that's me

Anyhow
the sights, the sounds
the feels - tactile
and emotional -

the whole dang thing
revelated itself

as it revelates still

it is wonderful.
Shall I keep it? Oh yes

I think
I will

and I can tell.

I will keep it full,
as it makes me old,
if it makes me ill,
as it makes me well

I will keep it still.
I will pick the pith
as I drink the juice
and I gnash the pulp,
and the rind also,

they will throw me away
an empty shell.

and away
I'll go

"carrying things"

Carrying things
we've been entrusted with,
such as things of our own, or
someone else's - hopefully
we asked! "Can I carry this
for me?" An often thoughtless
task - a glass of coffee

a computer, a book to read
a plate of dainties,

some cigarettes
(why not use pockets? Please)
or anything on which to feed
one's body, mind and soul

- we don't think, really
"These things are

in here, I want them all

with me." Convenience,
ease and comfort, we
don't even think

one trip! Perfect

almost there
where I want to be
with all this.

Until something shifts,
and then we drop the ball,

and lurching after it
it all turns wild
one way, the other
- trying quite responsibly
to gather everything back
midair, we let it

fall. All fall, and
oops

why did I even need a ball?
Seems I didn't think

this through. Look
at all this.

Now what
do I do

"The Quotes in the Title"

I used to have a system,
not a system, but a feel
for which poems got quotation marks,
which didn't,
and why proper case
or lower case should be employed
in any poem that I wrote,
when it came time to title it.
All based on something real,
that I resisted finding out
or trying to explain.
To try is fatal.
It could mess with it,
whatever it.
When something works,
you just don't mess.
In each case I was certain,
sure, or anyway infallible.
They seems no longer real,
those days. I look back
and see confidence,
and can't question decisions
made - but neither do I make
them, now. At least,
I make them not that way.
It seems I've lost the feel
for it. The system
has evolved. At least,
I still have

my feel

for line breaks.

"Killian the misanthrope"

Killian the misanthrope
was pretty much a racist, but
an undiscriminating one. He hated
people white and black, Latino,
Asian (Indian, and further East
and up, as well), he hated
both Americas, and all the
antipodeans, he hated all of history
and all of the historians. He hated
all imperials and conquerors
with certain verve, and most of all
whole-heartedly, whichever people
got there first, for each parcel
of land. He figured, they're the ones
who started it. His buddy John
heard everything, concurred
and disregarded it.

retreat.

We climbed to the huts
up the switchback trail
of a topless hill
on an endless coast.
We were taught that we would
find peace up there.
What we actually found
was something close.
It wasn't the view,
except when I turned

from it to you, because
you said "Look!"

And I did.
And I saw
what we came here for.
Or why I'd come,
at least.

This was not
in the book.

inspired by

Most of the people who
know how to live have died.
And I am just sitting bereft
and without a guide.
Luckily, most of them
wrote a book, on hope,
self-belief, or whatever it took
so now I sit wondering
what to write.

there are no such diamonds

Look,
I'm in crisis here.

A crisis is defined
by Michael Crichton
in a book made later
into a truly dreadful
movie as "a situation
previously tolerable,
which has been rendered
intolerable by the addition
of a new factor" or words
to similar precise effect, and
I'm having a really hard
time identifying
the new factor.

It's not freaking
me out, but
I feel like
it should be.

The mind makes real
what the body feels,

or the converse
can also be true,
of course. But

Somewhere
surely
there must have been
there has to have been
a situation previously
tolerable. If I could

find that

I'd be confident.
I could work from there,
sure in assumed certainty,
and cool in a crisis

that I'd say
was pretty
much made
for me.

the old forum

If I didn't have to log in
if I didn't need a password I think

that place is still there, and sometimes

I want to run, skipping gaily through the
waving high grass and wildflowers
of the past I misspent there

with all those human beings,
together
without a care or a connection
other than
internet. It was different, in those days

such places were new enough to be mistaken

for where it was at.
But it wasn't yet,
and never will be now. It seems

technology has forged ahead
without a body
anyhow

we don't feel very now,
no more. The cutting edge

is taking bows, and resolute,
refusing to encore.