SUMMER 2021
6/26/2021
Now, if I didn’t know any better,
and I closed my eyes,
I’d say that this feeling could
go on forever.
Disorient myself on purpose,
trick myself into not knowing
which way’s which,
I can put myself anywhere I want to be.
Say, smack dab in the middle of the ocean,
but the only creature is me,
or falling centuries through constellations
in the vastness of space.
My favorite imaginary place?
Nowhere, it’s always been kindest to me.
When I couldn’t point my way back home
and motion is inevitable like the
waves of the sea.
Later, if I’m lucky,
I will feel it in my dreams, displacement
cradling me to sleep
as my eyes are closed and my mind
puts itself wherever I need to be—
forever, eternally.
6/28/2021
In all honesty, she makes me want to
pull my hair out sometimes.
I just don't understand why she does the things she does; why we can't ever seem to meet I's.
But I know that she's trying,
in her own fucked up little way,
she is trying,
and I'd be lying
if I told you that I did not love her.
So I won't lie anymore; won't even give my self the chance (not a second one,
nor another one, anyways).
She scattered herself to the wind,
and the wind is having a bit of a hard time
keeping her threaded together.
But of course, we both know the truth:
always have, always will.
And that's it.
It makes me want to pull my hair out sometimes, yet we both know that it's
worth it.
7/2/2021
Joy is a very serious type of happiness.
It claws at you
with even more bite than the sorrow;
oasis is so much stronger than
the pull of the desert.
I know exactly where I'm at on this thing.
I can feel exactly where I'm at in this
tug-of-war:
Love loves me,
Time times me,
Life lives me.
I always have, always will.
And to think that others
can see this thing too!
I love you.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
With a joy as serious as life itself,
as serious and meaningless
as death itself,
as myself.
I'm delirious with joy
and serious as pain;
I'm sober with peace
and in love and insane!
7/6/2021
I know that a song has good bones
if I forget that it is a thing with an ending attached. Most of the time, endings are lazily tacked to infinities,
haphazardly stacked up like bricks to divinity. We know that there's more,
so we dub the X "trinity" :
here's half of what we know;
here's how it doesn't add up to whatever we don't; here is an "equals" sign.
(What kind of solution demands
slight-of-hand?) I think that I know something stronger than math;
I just don't know it in a way I understand.
I think I can feel something bigger than science; I've just been having a bit of trouble teaching it to myself.
I've taught me everything she knows;
I'm reaping every seed she sews.
I understand we have good bones,
that time leaves well enough alone,
that these short years I've known
will whittle on like overtones.
7/10/2021
I'm just as beautiful as everything else;
I craved short hair because
I need you to know that
I'm new again.
That hair on the top of my head,
it's dead.
And so am I; she isn't me.
I have obligations that contradict my biology
and denotations that undermine my
anatomy;
was it really not always this way?
Why is that so hard to believe?
Our reality upholds whatever we do,
counteracts actions with re-actions
and its truths with half of our minds
to deceive.
As for the other half, well, I think that it
resides where all the other lost things go,
buried in the footnotes of the tapestry,
superfluous as apathy,
ingenious as tragedy,
beautiful as everything.
7/13/2021
All I have to do is squint my eyes and the page goes from prose to indiscernible ink. Indistinguishable like one word from another, like the ones heard from our mothers, like the herd is one's cover.
No one knows what lies behind the magic wand: the mighty tongue, the vagabond, the cross-eyed-tongue-tied might I'd go as far as to say that I'd have gone out as far as I'd ever gone before— but not
for long you see, so long out to see
out at sea out at me. Could it be?
Or am I? Why decide to speak the curse?
The cold verse from my hand— understand? All I have to do is
close my eyes, take my time, bide it right, pay no mind, out of sight, see my self out of me and here and hear it long enough to
bite my tongue, tie it up and peel my own hands from their agency's complacency.
Adjacent me like paper things out of place, out of line, out of time by design.
Rewind your mind and try again!
It already isn't now— but it might've been then! And so now always dies,
squint my eyes.
7/14/2021
There must be some sort of magical tipping point when a collage ceases to be a collage and transforms into a piece wholly new. Should I renounce my model ship? This is the true reason why I can never pin down my identity: I'm replacing myself too quickly. Free as the river and twice as worn down, just as rain will never be caught in the same permutation.
Everything is either water or not-water,
living or not-living, orange or not-orange, and no matter what, always itself, whatever that may be or mean.
It may be that we've cut so many corners remodeling that we've all but lost sight of the blueprint; maybe shorthand isn't all that it's made out to be. An oddment here, a little mote there— and not even just figuratively! Cells of atoms of whatever the next smallest unit we're on now is called—
pieces to the puzzle! Scraps for the collage! Driftwood for the ship!
The tipping point is that it tips!
7/14/2021
I guess I'll just spout off nonsense-sex,
try to hex my way out of the next
little mess before things get complex
and I have to digress.
My hands are tied and my tongue is next—
nonsense-sex:
good for a long time
and time for a good, long
rest to reset, to inspect
what has yet to be said
and respect what I'm doomed
to repeat and regret.
Forget about context—
it's all nonsense!
Contextless consciences,
the self's next best guess
that is nonsense-sex!
Nonsense! Sex?
Yes!
It's larger than life and it's
cheaper than death!
To an apex whose senses are
primitively limited at best,
nonsense-sex
just makes sense!
7/18/2021
Two days have gone by
since two days ago,
and the same can be said for two years.
Don't even get me started on decades:
how long is time supposed to take?
Some days feel like a day's worth of time;
others end before they began;
some of them take years
and the majority are lost to history,
unwritten or otherwise disguised by
the present, unrelenting to projection.
I'm not yielding anymore:
the future is mine as much as it is everyone's,
and hope betrays its own fear.
This isn't hope; it's more sincere.
The future has already happened
and I know that I made the right decision because I'm only ever making one:
I am. I love because I know that love is the only thing worth doing; I sing because I have to feed the need to put time in its place, the one where and when
I am I am I am.
7/18/2021
Multiplicity does not allow for any
wiggle-room; you are time for
as long as you have it.
This is what makes the collective:
our collection of imagery,
our correction of energy,
our time here that binds us.
Not like slavery—
binds us like honey to itself,
like knowledge on a bookshelf.
It's what makes gravity so sticky,
why names stick more than envelopes
and why I will never forget you.
I don't have the best memory
and I don't have the best memories
but I know that we're nestled inside of this multiplicity.
7/20/2021
I found a link between the sun and the moon; I found it in the middle of the sky.
Chain-linked the atoms together—
and don't you dare think about
what makes up the chain.
The chain makes up itself, see,
the chain is its own contingency,
leaves no room for complacency,
absolves your false need for urgency.
It's happening, all of it.
Stagnancy is your sworn enemy,
it has to be.
Our minds simply lack the capacity
for infinity,
and all the while these
seconds keep nagging me.
Damn, I can feel it.
They're pulling me towards it,
tugging me along like my thoughts from my self, like my identity from the shelf.
I'm myself, and that means something.
I'm alive; I can barely even tell that
I'm dying. I'm not exactly sure how these degrees of separation work, but I'm trying.
7/23/2021
I've had a lot of life in my life;
I am fortunate enough to have lived
one so far that feels concentrated,
fool-proof like liquor.
And you don't have to prove your self to me; I know that everything is true
and that true includes you.
I know exactly what I was put here to do;
I know that love loves you and me, too.
I've got a lot of me in my self;
I've got a lot of time under my belt;
I've got a lot of God in my help;
I've got a lot of books on my shelf.
It-self, itself, my-self, myself:
the space in between was always only a formality, anyways.
It's totality, always.
All ways.
Any ways.
Anyway, that's all for today.
Today's infinitive, yesterday's derivative.
I've got a lot of life in my life,
initiative.
8/1/2021
I guess I didn't realize we were keeping score, scoring tabs like wet clay
sealed tighter than tombs.
I'll never understand how
we were made the same way,
look and see different shapes,
make mistakes.
I know what I want to do,
who I want to be.
Why isn't it me?
Well, it would appear that there's
a hole in the data;
an information gap so wide
that even time can't reconcile.
So stay awhile—what's the rush?
You're heading towards the respawn point;
I'm tired of keeping score.
What was that about love
keeping no record of wrongs?
Or was that one of the false ones? Prophets are the heroes
we should hope to never meet.
For what you know, so you become—
and I know nothing of the sum.
7/15/2021
The best compliment you can give art
is to say that it is intentional.
Deliberate, calculated:
unexpected, but only to you.
It's an admittance of defeat to an author:
you did something on purpose,
and that's on us for not realizing.
But then, the coin's other side:
only we can confirm what you see,
real-ize, make the apparition come to life.
These frequencies I know better than family are hitting the wall
in just the right way
and only now can I begin to appreciate
what you were trying to say:
the Devil's in the details!
I guess that would make God
the big picture.
And so the God has the Devil in him,
and I'll never know exactly what you mean anymore than you do me,
but we're lucky.
8/11/2021
I wonder if I am truly happy.
Which of course means that I am,
and I only have far too much
time on my hands.
I'm still unaware of which game we are playing; I think that I'm winning.
Too much time caught me red-handed,
and now I'm reminded that I am alive
(as if I could ever be anything else).
Alive and what?
(Why does there need to be
anything else?)
Alive and not-dead.
Alive and unable to know anything:
these words will always
confirm themselves.
Contra-diction, against our own speech.
"I" is a placeholder, much like the self
my language can't define.
Yet somehow we both use these same eyes to see; somehow we both have enough time on our hands to redefine what it means to be happy.
8/11/2021
They tell you to be yourself,
to be more like God,
so I say that I Am That I Am
and they call me a heretic.
Okay, scratch that. Try again:
I am I (if that's okay with you).
Much better!
Only this is not me—
I do not exist to satisfy any condition.
The nature of reality so clearly contradicts our conventions surrounding it.
This is why the concept of "being oneself"
is something that I should supposedly strive for as opposed to just being
another redundancy.
Be myself?
Why are we saying the same word twice?
When did the self become severed from being?
Somewhere inside of the history
which also contains me
forever and ever Amen.
Try again!
7/21/2021
Somebody's entire job is to deliver the eggs that went into my breakfast.
He has a daughter and two boys—
good kids. They love him when they can.
The daughter's got a bridal shower to go to today; it's not that she isn't happy for her friend, she just can't imagine falling in love with someone so quickly, you know?
Her fiancé seems nice enough, smart enough. Among those things, he's actually quite nervous about the whole ordeal:
for one thing, his family is flying out from Romania for the occasion and hardly speak any English. For another, he isn't convinced that really wants to go through with it. His sister tells him that this is normal and that it is temporary. She remembers her own wedding day with a sad kind of fondness. She tells him that the brain has a funny way of celebrating and an even funnier way of mourning, and that often they're one and the same. She misses her husband, she realizes in the middle of consoling her brother, but unfortunately for her, he died some years ago, about two years before I was born.
8/14/2021
I met a man last night that I knew
I'd never see again in my life.
Tried to talk to me about this and that,
what and not;
I looked him dead in the eyes,
dead as his eyes sunken in to his skeleton,
dead in the sense that to me,
he had never once even been alive.
After all, I'd only heard him ramble on for a few minutes or so— certainly not enough time to care about his infinite seconds coinciding with mine,
piling up like cars on the interstate,
like a meaning that
keeps getting stuck in your throat
worse than cigarette smoke.
He was trying to say it to me,
I just know it.
But I didn't care— I had places to be.
The homeless man smoking a cigarette at the gas station could've just as easily told me the meaning of life for those two dollars instead of wiping my windshield,
but I politely declined.
"Have a nice night—
for whatever that's worth, anyways."
Maybe next time.
8/17/2021
Just blank out—
I want you to get lost in it.
So lost that you don't even
know any better; look up
and the time did go by
even though its discretions
no longer apply.
Without it, timeless.
So alive you were dead.
In a trance between states,
between fates,
between calendar dates.
It's the half-empty-holy-grail,
the signpost at the head of the trail
and a reason to tell the damn tale:
get lost,
hope that the art tracks
like dirt on your shoes
once you find your way home.
8/17/2021
I get this notion
that these words are
generalizations of themselves,
are nothing if not
a compromise to Something they were
vainly designed to define in one's mind.
I have this feeling
that could never survive
outside of my body,
is nothing if not
a creature Life lives through
who vainly tries to externalize.
I have this idea in my head
that my head is what's giving me ideas,
is nothing if not
the current of Nature's hardware
vainly attempting to make itself known, less alone.
I have this hunch
that the magic is mine for the taking,
is nothing if not
another metaphor for how
language in vain
gives new names to the Same.
8/17/2021
Am I to know my self or forsake it?
Love my self or hate it?
My eyes are doomed to mirror the world back to me; I'll say a prayer by my being and I'll cast out my eyes to see.
So wanting anything is wrong,
is a sin that I should rid myself of,
but should I then not want the truth?
Is the truth simply to be, to lose my self and be, be, be?
I've certainly tried!
And that's the problem!
The part of me that is Creature knows that it will die right along with my body.
The part of me that metabolizes reality will just as soon digest itself and begin anew, never at rest, eternally so.
I love you.
It is the truest thing I know;
the realest thing I could ever hope to say:
I am I, you are you,
and love is in the middle.
8/18/2021
Some of last year's leaves are still dead on the ground,
and now more and more float down to meet them.
And we have these things called days
but you have to sleep sometimes,
and the same goes for seasons who make up the years who make up our lives
and you've gotta sleep sometimes.
And if you go to sleep
when the rest of us do,
we can all get together
when the sun is shining,
and if not, someone'll pay you more
to keep the world turning 'till breakfast.
Some of us eat our breakfast and keep track of our time with these fancy gridlines, and some of us fall right through just like leaves to the ground.
And we're young and we're old
and we're bought and we're sold
and the world turns to face the sun
not one more time— it's continuously,
and we pray to our prayers that the
Milky Way will be kinder to us
than we are to each other
indefinitely.
8/27/2021
We collapse in on each other like some sort of star being born, kiss the words
right from our own mouths—
pluck them out of empty space
and coax them back into the rhythm.
It doesn't need to be spoken;
it's already true.
But we say it anyway for good measure:
I care for you.
I love you, too. And whether
we know what we're saying
or say what we know, we can never
mistake what takes shape in that vertigo.
And yes, time still goes by,
whittled and wise like an old fairytale,
question-less and answerless and
origin-less and stale,
but tonight, he sees himself inside of the fluttering of our eyes, sees himself out
of a story too shameless for words
and waits out the ending
right along with us,
betting on new constellations,
feeding Fate's gambling fix.
6/23/2021
It freaks me out when people
believe in things too strongly.
Is that to say I don't? No,
I don't know; maybe I'm just
jealous of your faith.
How you trust the sun to rise each morning, how you manage to
flash-freeze gravity like it's no more ferocious than peaches.
Scares me like foreign places,
rinse and repeat after the tin man:
rain is nothing but an old wives' tale;
it can't hurt you
if you never learned the word for "rust".
Power struggles to keep up with your trust,
to keep up with the burdens you've given your ultimatum-assumptions.
I've got gumption, I guess,
because I know I'm none the wiser.
You're right— and so am I,
but I don't exactly see how that's relevant at the moment. The truth is the moment;
I believe in the truth,
I just don't know what it looks like to you.
9/3/2021
I could've been anything;
and yet I was always going to end up
exactly where I now am.
Exactly where I now is,
lost somewhere in the afterthought,
caught red-handless
like a ghost on trial.
Do your worst, gravity!
You'll never kill me alive!
Life will kill me; death will live me.
And so, in the end, same as always,
nothing really changes all that much:
we are and we think we know words for our opposite.
It's this language!
Don't you see how the presentation and the negation b
oth refer to something greater? This language!
My own words are lost on me;
my old self found herself free.
Mistaken identity could never capture me!
I refuse to give in to the apathy, to the blasphemy of tragedy!
If I can be anything,
I decide to be happy!
9/7/2021
I was falling into my self over and over again,
this sort of never-ending chasm that rung me inside and out,
and then I saw it from the other perspective:
just as endless, but from a slightly different angle.
The most minute difference in trajectory,
and we were both trapped inside of our own separate infinities.
Sometimes we reach toward one another;
most often it's easier to just let the motion
gut your soul in private.
My self betrays some inner weightlessness;
the scenery plays tricks on me, informs me incorrectly.
See what happens when you leave time be?
It goes on for exactly the right amount,
exactly the correct rate!
I'm sick of selling my life to man-made things.
I want to drone on in my own little way;
I want to fit in like the overtones; I want
to free-fall like I've never even heard of gravity. I want
to believe that there's something that lies outside of desire:
to be so lost in being that wanting sounds foreign and cold.
I never want things in my dreams;
I only happen back to the things that are happening.
There's no time to recall that I'm falling.
9/7/2021
I spend all this time coming up with theories, trying desperately calculate my self, guess what I'll do next, and all the while my self predicts me with a terrifying accuracy. I must have guessed that I'd be guessing, dressing up to look like answers to a riddle I've yet to decipher. Proving my self right, as always, granting my three wishes as if the twist was ever worth all this. I spend all this time in vain to find some almighty cause, predict that which predicts me, understand who calls me "I", and all the while I'm adding more and more variables with each passing second, one more tally mark in this slot or another. I'm gambling on the gambler to do what he does best; I'm counting on the counter to put my arithmetic skills to rest. It's not a test; this isn't a test. Right and wrong originate from within, and I am not somewhere in the middle 'cause the opposites extend into themselves and out of my own origin. The word sin creates itself, and love hates itself because it is confused— not because it isn't true. That Love can hide itself in time is what makes humans being.
9/8/2021
He tells me it’s
“another day in paradise”, except I’m
not exactly sure who he is trying to convince,
lead him down the labyrinth / hallway
and try not to wince:
nobody wants to be a plumber, after all,
or, at least, I get the impression that the
Nameless Man downstairs once had other dreams in mind.
I try my best to be polite, to stay out of his way,
to be one of the more pleasant interactions
he’ll have today.
He doesn’t want any of my pity, I know
—none of them do—
so I don’t feel sorry for him.
I try my best not to feel sorry for anyone:
the Nameless Man downstairs
will be paid for his time
and go home to his kids or his girlfriend or his empty apartment
and I won’t dare ask him his name
because what’s that one saying
about the wisest person at the nude beach covering
his face and not his genitals?
I’m putting words in his mouth;
I’m keeping him in business;
I hope that he meant it when he said it was
“another day in paradise”.
9/10/2021
The trick is to just keep your eyes open
as wide as you can;
let the light that was always meant to reach you reach you.
You have to be willing to let the light
catch your eye
or this isn't going to work.
Eternally caught in the crossfire
between spectator and participator:
if I were to join in on the fun,
I'd risk noticing that I'm the one having it.
Otherwise, just keep your eyes
as open as you can, and never plan
on seeing shooting stars
until they fall right into your attention
that spans the entire night sky—
open wide!
The line that runs between
transmitter and receiver
is thinner than you think.
Don't you dare blink!
9/13/2021
You can't rule out that possibility,
explain it away with your rules
that do not exist in nature;
nature is the rule.
Our minds create this dream for us
that we are something separate,
and so we try to make these things called rules,
and we poke at things with our instruments
and we make up our minds
thanks to inference—
but the data interprets us back.
Nothing knows you better
than all that you are not,
the space inside your information gaps.
This is why recognition is the first step to love:
it is an appreciation of
the paradox of opposites.
An admiration for negation,
a total treason of the senses!
What among nature
cannot be combined to then make itself,
contained within itself, explained outside the self?
Rule number one:
trusting nature helps.
9/14/2021
"The only honest human is the artist,
because only the artist admits he is a liar."
Who's to say that the scientists
believe themselves?
(And who is to say that I don't?)
Don't act like the best type of response
could be anything less than a question,
than some pitiful plea for help.
I aim to understand my self—
or, at least, understand all I can.
Is that not what the scientist does?
Do you truly believe what the scientist sees
could be anything less than a mirror?
He is a liar to me.
He who imagines himself to be anyone else,
could be anything more than a question.
Well, less of a question and more of an answer,
though that of the truth
I don't ever suspect,
unless the scientists know Truth
exactly how I know it— held under!
Accessing it directly
through the art of crunching numbers.
9/16/2021
It gets to be a little uncomfortable now and again,
sort of like when you hear crickets chirping in the daytime:
it's either too good to be true, or too true to be good.
The two can't coexist; the precious mind
can only house one at a time.
Try on thoughts like new clothes
and get locked in the fitting room.
It's a little bit uncomfortable at first,
sort of like an ill-fitting shirt or another outburst,
except eventually, I'm told you learn
to love the thing for better and for worse.
It's all about the veil; the light
will only meet your eyes what for
how wide you can stand to maintain them.
Much the same way that your mind
takes on lies to the extent it explains them.
There is nothing you are meant to see,
nothing to be shown— for in your senses,
you are always alone.
This no doubt will prompt your psychological defenses
into conjuring up all kinds of misdirections:
good and evil, true and false:
blasphemic in-totality!
Only through death will you finally be comfortable—
but you have better things to do!
Better sights to see,
better selves to be!
9/18/2021
Ask the more beautiful question,
because all of them are
answerless orphans,
and you have angles to take
and stars to claim.
Take the shape of flatness;
take the understanding of a misunderstanding
and treat her well,
kinder than you do yourself—
but only 'cause you don't know any better.
No, you swear you only know what's worse.
And that's the curse!
There's a reason why rhyming makes things sound truer:
we are addicted to the evolution of the sound,
of the copy of a copy of a meaning yet to be found.
And to cast old from new is the best way to die.
I am nothing if not what verbs imply:
ongoing, rising and falling like intonation's lullaby—
not a matter of who,
But a question of "why?"
Questions shouldn't rest along grid lines;
the best ones are messy like a Pollock,
beautiful like the space
between you and your body.
9/21/2021
I don't really think that it's about any one thing in particular; I think
and I think and I think
and Descartes tells me that therefore I am
but I'm not even so sure about that nowadays.
I think that this isn't really "thinking" so much as it is noticing:
I've always known my thoughts were not my own—
and who I therefore am is no exception.
"X does this, and therefore X is"?
Sounds like bad math if you ask me!
Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Monday's:
that is, you think that there is such a thing as "Monday",
and therefore it affects you.
I think the logic falls apart at "therefore":
didn't anybody bother telling you
that effects precede their own causes?
That exceptions precede their own rules?
That there is no such thing as a self or a thought
and that all you can ever hope to be is a fool?
No, I suppose not:
better to save face than to face what can't be saved,
I think.
9/22/2021
I just remembered
that I'm gonna die again.
I'm remembering it like a history date—
nothing too serious.
Something I'll forget about
in an hour or two, in one ear, out the other.
One long life thanks to mother!
This is my eternity:
always has been, always will be.
Should that scare me?
No, I suppose that fear
is just another one of life's amenities,
sort of like
complimentary breakfast at hotels.
I am gratitude in motion—
I don't know what death is;
I'm just repeating what I've been told.
All I can do is speculate
from the comfort of the only home I've ever known—
if only temporarily.
Thanks to this self needing a host
and this host needing relief.
But until then, I'm lucky to remember that
I'm gonna die again.