Crawflight

craw berries never   craw berries ever
straw berries whether  or not you want 'em (...Heather)
craw babies in leather   craw daddies never  
craw honeys with feathers   crustaceans in flight.

Grug Wrap

Things so irregular
but regular enough
rough
around the edges
trim hedges
like Laura Bush
Like a laurel
wreath, frankly
like Aretha Franklin
Getting mad r-e-s-p-e-c-t
Spelling it out like Tori
she means so much to me
Beverly Hills forever
Strawberry Fields
Forever
Crawberries never
Tonight is so pleather.

this is your education;

how does one person ever
                         another reach
how are we globes
                 longing infinite beginnings
meeting lonely little love dogs
                        sadness   (splitlogs)
a buried stone never
                      won't a sunset see

belladonna overdose; sunshine sweats
               of (oh!) a careless mind
mushroom medication --- mushroom dedication
                         a fungus   on me   growing
one day adult will become, will
         be   ready to father
to drift, father   to drift farther   [yet]   away from ill-where
                )like anywhere; (except  that-it's)
                 malady's location(

malady. mister   malady here.
                               hello: don't.

her low mood, your less-of-an-appetite,
                   amphetamines & crybabies.
(somewhere there's cymbals here,
                     ...goddam)

i wish i had been a stork
                        i'd never deliver children
but presents with bombs inside
                 and powdered phonics:
this is your education;

exactly the way it is at 7:24 on a tuesday

bromance   romance  sit on yer hands   handstands 

become a father   become a man  become a daddy   become a brand. 

internet twitter stalkers got leg room in nightstands. 

internet twitterbots talk nonsense in bit rams 

Bikram, yoga, to hot to letter in, melted pepperdom, 

motley martyrdom. an old man an old sailor a new girl a new prince a new boyfriend girlfriend child picture tits boobs haircut 

just letting you know

just filling you in 

just making you to be a pothole   pothead   asshole   

crayfish in the dark sleep 

sometimes sunshine comes to mind sometimes sunshine doesn't 

sometimes sunshine doesn't 

sometimes sunlight shudders (makes me)

bored, wary, capitulate --- strung-out, heresy, days late

days after the mashed potato of yesterday stringent allowance allotment 

a lot wrong in the basement 

a lot right on the pavement 

that's a lie but it's okay, Vin 

Dickhead Diesel Van Weirdo Hairdo Where Do You Ever Go 

What Do You Ever Do. Creeps seeping even into this 

this art this nothing this post this bluffing this goddam esophagus 

chugging puffing brandywine like fine dandelion 

wine ::: crock ::: pot ::: severance ::: severed ::: fractured 

lactate, & the abysmal worm story,

what a pair of twins those were, 

working at the dime store. 

it's raining outside 

it rains all day outside the trainstop & 

i never use my stamps. 

Mitsubishi elf dossier

i couldn't possibly be better
said the hat-trick   to his iceskates
i am not probably a letter;

i am not possibly Japan,
but hellen keller; Mitsubishi
execs wearing sweaters.

Sad

Down by the Jetty --- please forgive me --- I'm sinking under
i  may  never   return
like a folk
-talking man,
allegedly hollow,
with dreams of musk
& cornish kaleidoscopic
bravery, kid-like. Just
this once.

You Make Real Friends Quickly

I like telling people stuff they've never heard before
those that aren't used to candid remarks
or reflection
are mere images of themselves

If we could all see ourselves
it would make things easier
though maybe too obvious
and not as fun

Meanwhile a sigh-so-deep,
thinking about a girl again
and forgot to breathe
for a couple seconds

Music takes the mind off

Don't mind my music
passionate about Passion Pit
I'm so indie I might be Hindi

Each its own thing

These are amazing:
each made with flesh,
this once, in communion
with itself, the basket thus
completed  was an arc
of nomadic magic;

   [thought, be-           [a sparrow, 
    come a thing]        growing thin]

Sometimes I even imagine
picturing everybody I know
all at brightly & forthwith once ---

:::I mean to really know everybody,
at once:::

;

But I cannot do it. It is a plan
that is a fish
                     already bone. But

allow me to say: Freedom's only
American as your appetite. A
pipe left at the steamfitter's
union is one pipe gone,
tomorrow's woodlouse.

But this isn't Gramercy; we've
still got the kids to raise
and the bare furniture to arrange
in as much a way as to say:
below us, here, are our things,
which we believe we have

well organized. What I'm saying is
unnecessary. For the clockwearing
amongst us, all the angles are

obtuse and mesmerized; Andy's
hidden his own adventure. I stand
over him with the daypod -- my eye
blind with brows and brown
fluctuations of minute sandals that

dare to expose, any moment, the frail
(&
indomitable) architecture of the mind,
one sad wing from flight.

Redeemer

We are all dreamers.
Listening to glistening jewels
"Cool!", "fascinating."
Ojibwe Indians
yes, weaving dreams
Fastening what seem to be seams
what else would they be?

We are all baskets
case in point
boll weevils = bowl weavers
evil little urban achievers
long relievers in disbelief of starting pitchers: Tom Seavers

We need ability to redress
and readdress, and reassess
what is important.
what is portent?
Pregnant with emotion -
"no baby," I'm not actually pregnant.

Mavis Beacon

ankle   attach   monocle   prison
welfare   well-founded   myriad
controlcomplain meanderpander
preempt-outlaw-exam-remander
remonstrate   recupe   Jenga   --
comply-village-senescence-opium
Mandlebrot   fishtank   snowcone
c   a   n   c   e   r   f   ish   swimm
ing a w a y withmyfood --vacuole

Tough Poem

This is a tough poem; tougher than bone
but twice as brittle. Imagine me at the
edge of the tome, but more little. Imagine
bone cemeteries; imagine stories about
poems about stony
nights, water falling from sky.

Yes, I've been here before. The ground
(scat) devoid of sandals is a mongrel
we aren't diaspora anymore, but we are.
This is tough poem; it isn't easy
---it never will be---easy to explain. I'm
not trying to be obscure.

That's it, the Yonsei. Even 4th generation
Japanese have a word for it: belonging.
What am I? I man wearing a sweater w/
an old sweat-stained Cardinals hat & an
inkling I could do better, much better.

A reflex then, toward calming. Saying
"...but it's okay, everything will be
alright." And it will, of course---as much as
it wasn't. As much as it won't be: sadness,
you know, sadness already gathering like
a frown at the edge of your mouth: I should

have told you my grandmother is probably
dying. A sad thing, a sad thing. Nothing
absurd about it. As ordinary (and deeply
felt, meaning extraordinary, to me) as life:
"The wise man is ready to leave any time."

What about the wise woman? My grandmother,
wise, tough, deeply-feeling, real. More stolid
and solid and earthly / spiritual than I will ever
be. Roots in the deep soil, that one. A willow
tree with owl nests. A hurricane couldn't uproot
that old gal. But age will, I'll know. Ninety-seven.
97, ma. I'm going to miss you. I miss you already.

Circular & demineralized

[title here] [art work] [unnoticed fenestrations]
[molecular artwork] [artwork]
<> <> <> 


Citizens become scientists:     Captured 
 ants snack on cookie crumb-
bait in a plastic 
bag at Saint 
     Stephens.
     (You know, the Elementary).
Saint Stephens in all his 
glim glitter; his modern decorative
manwear; his bonnet of undue 
appreciation for the arts. A fork
in his uvula, but not a snake-
man. (He's not a snake, man! 
HE'S NOT A SNAKE! DAMN! 
     fun w/ words w/ friends 
    pepper peppermint 
    Doctor P. )
Again at the seminary. Our tribe
returns. The scene changes. I'm
caught speeding on my way to meet
& greet Stephens. A big fan of the
man. His bonnet, etc. He was gone,
at the tanning salon. 

Newly, for the, aspartame, girl

We'll get it back,
said the redhead. Her bright
nubes were brightly ripping
off the cameras
and arranging them into
a morbid galley of winking,
stinking starfish, just newly home
for the killing.
     ]murder

The Club (Cowards, Racists)

The Club is a club you can't club in. It
only allows Hispanics who are white
(but exclusive Spaniards) and Whites who
aren't Hispanic (that's a joke, of course). Mex
     -     i     -     cans     -
are strictly disallowed, but invited--nay,
encouraged, to apply; dishwashers are
 needed, and respected. Except when

it comes to their
spectacles; they can't afford them. De-
cent ones, of coures. Ha ha. Milton. M-
an, what a laugh. Camaraderie and its
more black moments, Paradise Where? 
The only question that's ever mattered.
Remember when? Even a league called
racist. It wasn't. Maybe? (Negro.) Be-leagured,
is my life. White hair slicked back and old,
old shallow talk. That. Service me a
lemon G & T & I'll tip you. [      ]  

(I'll remark ironically later about how
Mark Twain's old mansion
is right next to the projects
in Hartford.) (And omit a racial slur
because I'm afraid as a coward.)

Desiree Yawton

Was blonde apple pie.
Pie in the sky. Desiree, with the Williams's.
Yawton, like the Clifton's. Rich-y, edged and dreamed out.
Desiree Yawton, Bridge over the River Kwai. Desiree.
Yessir.

Dirt is Art

I ran like soles over soil
I rock like war over oil

Afternoon rap couplet

I rock rolls like Mr. Royce or Chinese take-out
I'm rock: I beat scissors, roll papers and bake out

2 PM

1. Tanner was a lover; a heart-throb

Tanner's in the mob--but his heart isn't. 

2. Dom likes drugs... to write about. Of course he would only consume legal ones, like massive quantities of alcohol, pipe tobacco, chew, Vicodin, Xanax, Percocet, Lithium, Prozac, & palms full of muscle-relaxants. Of course he'd only take prescription drugs if he had a prescription. He's quite the Boy Scout, at least in terms of his drug habits. But you'll never catch him smoking on even a honest day's wrangle of humble pipe-grass, nor could even livid dragoons compel him to gnaw a psilocybin mushroom. 

Once he steamed some veggies and felt guilty about it. He's not sure how this relates but told me to pass it on anyway.    

The Coolest Mother-F'ing Thing I Thought Up in the Last Few Hours

"I don't want to drag; I want to breathe," says Harry says to Morgen.
"But I want to drag," says Morgen to Harry.

Many years later, after the pair separated when Morgen took interest in a Filippino courtier during Harry's service, the man -- Harry Lassiter! They shall know me!!! -- would say this exactly line again, forgetting momentarily he's uttered such words before, to a confused co-ed he'd gotten wet. "I don't want to drag; I want to breathe!" He yelled one crisp autumn night in his 43rd year. It was like wine binding & transmuting to dark wood. It was like wind blowing and straining a sapling without breaking. Water splashing with light, flecks of astor sparkles. WAKE UP. YOU want to BREATHE --- ! ...

It was like many things, but mainly it was

vegetate

your road is my horse
there is no bucket without a bottom
there aren't pails without pals -- at least in kindergarten
when the kind children vegetate the landings of
strange men with houses.

7 ways to look at a drug rep (be my winding wheel)

1.
The privations of a mutagen clerk
are driving up the cost of living
in this fair berg. Nobody has seen the icing
at the bottom of the cake ::: of the bold
lice, humping their way about the blood
of the boy octopus; a body ::: a bold ploy.

2.
The platitudes of the elements is eleven
exactly. I calculated it with magic math
that you shall never comprehend.

3.
The elements are their own elements
or so I've been told. They've been to
Switzerland, they've been to France.
They have no idea how their throat
becomes connected to their eyes.

4.
Nietzsche was more than a curmudgeon,
he was a thief -- who stole with his
drug-dialed dimensions the space where
tenderness inhabits the arm of power
and does not only favor those of flaxen lock.

5.
Bold ploys suffer most when the hand
is at hand; when the boy is the bluest
shape you've ever seen and by God if
you're gonna die you're gonna birth:
Gonna verb this life all right. Gonna
swerve like a bike my Life on it
--the arrangement hard to explain
like an oil spill is hard to contain--
     [Damn, you! --]

6.
an utmost spot of brilliant brilliance.
A slow-motion stop cone of the moon;
a beamed out, brimmed out choker show,
coke luncheon powder sniffed by mechanical
crunchers-burners-injectors-smokejacks
like an ammonia meteor showers of snow-proof delivery
::: Like a lottery kitchen un-shearing her knives,
and becoming pregnant, just for a second.

6b.
This is the real life cinema of a movie never
written, except by living.

7.
The best souls are given.
Thank you. And more: forgive me. I don't
deserve.

ABYSSinia; quoth

SO  proud  to be A B Y S S i n i a n
in the abyss again [like who?-him]

so proud, abyssinia
your darklust child's heart, black zinnia

this age is dark/light, ::: contagion; chlamydia
explode the locomotive dopeshow hymnal

it's not a symbol
not a thimbleful
protective fingerwear, futbol, Oldsmobile

no hope guys, just no hope, peeps--
try to express myself, just another creep.

 [...BLOG/blogblog:]
like evolution jerks ::: timely-equal-trees
punctuated equilibrium : fungibility
express yourself or else
express yourself or cry
i got an icetray full but not hope, hi.

Proud to be Abyssinian

Abyssinian anthem: "I'm so proud to be Abyssinian, where at least I know I'm--
a-de-facto-resident-of-modern-day-Ethiopia-Somalia-Djibouti-Egypt-Sudan-South-
Sudan-Eritrea-and/or-Saudi-Arabia!!!"

[The worst and/or best fictional national anthem.]

Earth-Tone Grove

Somebody noticed an unusual preponderance of red in the office today, which is especially quizzical since said members of the diaspora don't usually wear red (said a woman co-worker). "I don't usually wear red either," I said, in so many words, cloaked in a brick button down (a monumental effort just to don ::: a rotting albatross ::: this unreal pain). "I'm usually Earth-Tone City," I actually said.

They got the gist. "That doesn't fit," though, my boss said (a solid dude, in a former-life likely a flint-knapper). "It should be Earth-Tone Grove or something." I agreed.

As I sit here

on Yom Kippur
I feel a sharp hunger for more than food.
I'm wondering what it's like to be full of purpose,
and wondering what exactly I should be atoning for.

Racist jokes. General insensitivity to the plight of others.
I'm sure I have neglected some of my more distant family.
I have probably made my mom sad at times,
just by not doing as much as I could.
I could go on. But I won't. At least not on paper.

Laziness is not a virtue - it's not ladylike.
But it's not like me to create fire, or fuel it.
Just trying to emanate warmth through compassion,
love and positive energy whenever possible.
I strive for happiness and a peaceful, humble existence. Seriously.
I just want my friends to be safe. And I don't want to get cancer. Is that too much to ask?
Probably.

I really like talking to older people, they have seen more of this life and this world than me.
But young people are more exciting, more impressionable.
And at this point I am old enough to impart at least some wisdom.

Truly, family and friends really are what's important.
It's too real to be a cliche.

We don't live alone. Life is symbiotic, symbolic.
Too short to be robotic. Too awesome and exotic.
I don't want the internet on my phone, for example.
I crave only what is natural. Here's a sample:
What I crave is caveman life
back to the roots and berries
tubers and twigs, figs.
And I admit, cities are exhausting.
Tired of treading through cars emitting exhaust
amidst people who are lost
and looking just for something to look for.

One day I have a cold.
The next day my right calf is sore.
So I can't play sports for a while.
This is a disaster in my book - cuts me to the core -
though it doesn't warrant a whole chapter.
My book's called "Life is Often Good"
I haven't written it yet, it's just part of the book I'm writing now
"The Great Book of Great Book Ideas"

I teach a graduate course
called Introduction to Introspection
It encourages reflection. Usually rhyming and silliness in the last couple stanzas distills what I'm trying to get across.
Not this time.

In sum: Life is great. God is good.
I accidentally gave money to a very Jesus-y group the other day.
A black woman came up to my car while I was at a red light.
And I gave her a dollar coin before reading the brochure she gave me.
But she told me God bless you, and Amen. And it made me feel good.

No moral here, or message.
I think Yom Kippur is a great holiday, and it really represents what I appreciate about being Jewish. If you don't allow religion to take over your life and dictate your actions entirely, it can be incredibly illuminating. Maybe psilocybin helps, but openness goes a long way on its own.

Don't take anything for granted.

I could write a blug

See? As long as it's not for a grade
I'm a believer in Shiva.
And I trust you'll keep reading
since we're friends.

Everything's a curtain
imagined dairy - nothing is certain.
making yogurt pertinent again

My shirt is too big
Picture of an aphid
and the Star of David
Biggest religious expression since the Sistine Chapel

Favorite ninja turtle, since D'Angelo
who painted the ceiling purple
you're either an impressionist or expressionless
I have an ocean of emotions

There's a potion for that.

Here's yer goddam Doha journal

Motorola (patent pending) & minaret. As in, Hello globalism,
I shrined a mosque today. Tapestry boulevard with the hoodlums,
late morning Fresca on email. Not women but buttons, buttons,
my chief concern now; Maintain cogent garments. [Shortage of
sewing equipment here. --Doha.] Business trip to the Solomon
Isles before--how lovely. Even marmalade at tea & those double-
jointed Incan twins from Fandango. Boy, their product is tight. I-
PO. Mailbox in the morning; mild trouble with drug users. Rest of
stay--superb. Now a minor wrinkle: a taste of rain, removed from
the memory, in the desert. This is a miracle or portent of doom.

Barely articulate sentences about a "blog plan"

I'm sick of text edit. I need to install Microsoft word. A microcosm of the Baby-Boomer sell-out: I don't like Microsoft and don't want to give them my money, but I want a nicer computer program.

My roommate said to me: "I was always convinced that if I started taking Adderall, I'd be Under Secretary of the Navy now." That's when I reminded him he WAS the Under Secretary for the Navy. [This is where I consider taking the joke too far, looking up who the Under Secretary is (which I should probably know anyway) and making a joke about my roommate actually being that real person. But instead of making this kind of weird joke that would be too specific to follow without raising your eyebrows/gizzards--going one step further than would likely be funny--I just look up who the person is because it's an important position and I'm on a mission, albeit an extremely small and specific one.]

Mission Completed: Rob Work. A real "piece of work,"who actually went to the U of I. Kewl.

Ideas:
1) Blog about culture wars, somehow involving science.
A main character would be a hyper-honest postgrad liberal who could examine some of the more disturbing aspects of his/our legacy.
I.e. NOBODY understand something as commonly talked about as dark energy.
As far as I know, the whole thing could be an unmitigated, foaming-at-the-mouth lie. And to perhaps put more of my cards on the table than is comfortable, I do think it is basically bullshit. How could we possibly know there's a thing called dark matter and dark energy, and furthermore that the universe is accelerating? I readily admit I don't know the advanced math that they have used to get to this point. But knowing some math, and having as logical a brain as possible at this moment in time, it smells, you know. Dark energy? Give me a fucking break.

Another character could be like CK, ranting & raving about conspiracies, elites, the intelligence community, tha Rockafellas, Rothschildz, Kissinger, Z-Big, Soros, multiple-linear regression, the Butcher of Belgrade, etc.

<>
Annie Alabaster and Fred Filibuster

<>
DR: Das Racist, Duane Reade and the D-R; doctor.
If you give me a test I'm obvi tha Proctor

Dog

Fire will consume all things &

I become a wolf, then shed:

a naked unimpeachable canine 

wild without reason or coat. 

I fly between walls remodeled

in ash & bone, my jerky tongue 

the only reminder of my flesh 

save ragged ligaments 

like fragile sentences composed. 

Across dead cinemas I vault, o'er

teakwood carriages & children's last

goodbyes. Their eyes are glass now, 

eyes of blackened doles. Their eyes

are black now; eyes of hardened wine. 

some::::done

A black cherry in a black oven busts
open with black currant tones exposed
like the bulldozer's dragon-smoke nose
some carnage (our ilk) already done.

Wolves & women

1.
I said it had to be you & you said
it had to be medicine it had to be me
it had to be fair; it had to be great; it
needed to be everything

2.
The washrooms of the bristling continent are alive with post coital youngsters, cleaning up their messy joy. The banisters of America, with forgotten spritzers, are alive, enlivened, erotic youth going at it seamstresses weaving scarves to wear about on a chilly evening at Columbia. Door ways, stairwells--it's all brimming over with secrets, dull, desultory secrets. The kind you barely see except in tinted glass at 2:30 a.m. on a Tuesday when you're walking home nursing a cold & chlamydia.

& you couldn't say anyway what it is that you saw. But oh, the glory. 

Wolves & Fog

I miss wolves of various stripes
tufts / & paws / & thru the woods /
here the trumpets of brass become
springs of combative neuroses
the campbell's camp bell ringing,
incessantly, *you know* [] [] []
door pipes in their brawned out
horn rims... blowing like visions
stolen between the night's rain &
the dawn's grave brave morn fog.

I Miss Everything

And everyone.
I would be remiss if I didn't leave some mystery
as to what exactly I'm talking about.
But sometimes shit is just forlorn.

Forlorn and twenty years ago
I was six. Age is relative.
I revel in relevance.
Merely scraping surfaces
so as not to drown in thought.

I know how to be good. Make love, not war.
Being kind. Forgiveness. Friendship.
They will take you far, figuratively
Luckily I'm not trying to get anywhere
at least not literally or actively.

I'm mostly figurative.
And altogether too passive
as if you couldn't tell by my voice.
Too proud to be pensive
too humble to be eating pie.

Freestyle # Eleven$

This is absurdist
observe it.
What the word is?
Hint: it's in Kurdish
(or cornish) game hen
we're gay men.
Not homophobic like Kobe
or Tim Hardaway,
and oh by the way.
he's a slapdick.
Slash that movie slapshot that movie is dope
hockey sucks though, ice skates and pucks, bro
that shit sucks yo.
Stab you with my skate
first person ever to do that
so that's something
why don't you write home about it
on your phony ass macintosh

Am I Memorable?

Have you ever had the feeling you wanted to do something profound, write something profound?
But it doesn't work like that.
But maybe it should.

Ubiquitous equity

This is ambitious.
You're a piece of frost
I'm a piece of toast

Delicious.
you were born to butter bread
and I was born to eat it

This is advice.
Heed it.

This is virtuous.
Patience is a searchthrough
frozen time with a dash of vanullah.

Yogurt, you go girl.
Baby don't be sad
low-fat.

You're so that
I'm so this
I'm swiss.

Like from Swaziland
Totally switzy, man
totes fuckin swiss.

Swedenland is bliss.

incense & opium

there are pipes of grass
made by the elephant

bowls of wood, specks
of amethyst; you know --

your actions speak louder
than the woodlute, but not

the piper. your bathtub,
etched in copper, we found
out back in the woodlot ;

i cannot explain how beautiful
you are, a morning jog, i can't

show you the grace of a moment
or if i can, my flag flags, you know...
a droopy sedimentary chevron.

nobody rallies around a column
of simple wood, unless indeed
the intent is to murder
or, more likely, bake.

Conversation (imagined)

Guy: "Darling, you are truly my most prized possession"
Girl: "Possession? You don't own me!"
Guy: "Ah, I should rephrase. You are the most important thing in my life."
Girl: "Thing?"
Guy: "Listen, fuck you. I'm trying to express a deep emotional attachment to you."
Girl: "Oh. Thanks. Lovely."
Guy: "Well?"
Girl: "Well, what?"
Guy: "Don't you feel the same way?"
Girl: "Oh yes. Of course I do. You're like, awesome."

fat man, on bus (AMERICAN FINANCE)

from the gills of the heart
to the folds of the flesh,
a fat man, falling inward (& yet
you wouldn't know), is a size
too big, too big to flourish, but
too big to fail (naturally) -- i.e.
small enough yet to function
to jettison himself outward; smiling,
this morning, with largesse enough
even for cancer (why not? smoking
kills too, baby) he's just a post-coitus

bleary-eyed stranger with rations
for himself and his neighbors, is
immaculate. a fat man, gotten lucky,
on a bus. smiling all the way home.

My Body is a Temple

A temple of doom.
Indiana jones' arch nemeses are Ohio Smith and Illinois Anderson
I re-opened a wound on my leg, now surely a scar
bleeding builds character
Sweating does the opposite
August blows
Breezes are nice
clouds move swishersweet
chimney sweep, chimchimcharoo
chimmichurri kangaroos
always all hopped up
all ways are highways